Stupidest SCAM I've ever seen.........

Pennywise

These fraudsters deliberately make the emails obvious because they don't want to waste their time on people who'll twig it's a con. They want the really stupid and/or gullible people to get sucked in, and this kind of obvious email is a good way of them weeding out the ones with common sense. And yes, I also know two people who've fallen for this type of thing, one a dentist and the other a managing director, both of whom were very highly educated, but also stupid in lots of other ways. Education and intelligence aren't the same thing.

hollydays

Pennywise wrote: »

These fraudsters deliberately make the emails obvious because they don't want to waste their time on people who'll twig it's a con. They want the really stupid and/or gullible people to get sucked in, and this kind of obvious email is a good way of them weeding out the ones with common sense. And yes, I also know two people who've fallen for this type of thing, one a dentist and the other a managing director, both of whom were very highly educated, but also stupid in lots of other ways. Education and intelligence aren't the same thing.

Interesting theory but I'm not sure it's correct.

Gingernutty

From someone I got a quote from for some work around the house

"Trip...Please Help!

Hello!
I'm sorry you're getting the mail from me at this Point in time,my family and I came down here to Istanbul,Turkey for a short vacation unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel we stayed,all cash credit cards and cell were stolen off but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.

I have been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and our flight leaves pretty soon from now but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle the bills.Please be so kind to reply back so I can tell you what to do and how to get some cash to us.

I'm freaked out at the moment"

Uh, yeah. Right.

I've sent him a text telling him to check his email account.

Toothsmith

A tutor of mine at Dental School also had a practice where she worked part time.

An incredibly clever and lovely lady.

She died of a brain tumour several years ago. (Far too young).

When her relatives came to look at her estate, huge sums of money were missing due to her replying to scams like this.

So yes - it might seem stupid to us of sound mind and health that people can be taken in by such emails. But the brain is a very complex organ, and it doesn't take much for a particular filter to be knocked out whilst the person is seeming to function perfectly well in every other aspect of their life.

These emails would not be sent out in such abundance if nobody ever replied to them - and it is not as simple as 'the stupid' who respond to them.

paddyrg

kwikbreaks wrote: »

I doubt the sort of people who would fall for it make a habit of visiting any scam warning sites. I think they are mostly set up to give visitors a good laugh.

Done already anyway - http://www.419scam.org/emails/2014-10/15/00063917.25.htm

It helps for anyone searching any of the text in a search engine - the top rated results are scam warning sites. It does help - sites like scamwarners do get thanks from people who found them by doing a bit of searching and it reassured them that it was a scam and to drop it. I know one of the admins, it really does help!

kaflinkle

A colleague of mine who's Nigerian and over there now, says that a majority of these emails come from teenagers sitting in an internet cafe just cracking out thousands of these a day.

geerex

Anyone stupid enough to fall for these deserves all that they get.

Ronaldo_Mconaldo

I have no seed of my own to inherit if you are wondering
what the reason for My Generosity might be it is because I have no one to
inherit it as my late husband and I had no child due to my barrenness

This line is hilarious.

oldhand

You have me worried now,I was hoping to receive my share of $120 million just for letting a friend in nigeria use my bank account,Just to be sure I will wait until next week and if I still hear nothing from him I will email my bank account details again in case he missed them first time.............:cool:

bargainbetty

I had to call a man in the USA to tell him that he was being scammed by one of these groups. He had sent us a notarised copy of his passport (it was a law firm) and details of the payment he would be making. He was on his way to Western Union with $500 in his pocket when I contacted him to tell him we knew nothing about it or him and that he was being conned.

He had been told an elderly distant relative had died and he needed to pay the sum to us to free up the legacy documents that would release the inheritance to his family. He turned his car around and went home with the money still in his pocket.