New Nigerian Email - Help, I'm trapped in Nigeria!

[RyanMcC]

I received the following email that appeared to be from a customer of mine, it came from a customer's email address and included his full name at the end of the email.

How are you?.......I hope you are having a wonderful day, well i must say
that i am sorry if you think this may be bothering to you but i have no
choice at this point in time, I am currently in a west African country
Nigeria as i traveled there for meeting, sorry and accept my apology that
i didn't inform you that i was traveling , I am currently having some
problems at the moment, When i came down from the airport i flagged a Cab
to take me to the nearest hotel which i paid for before i entered. But
to my utmost surprise when i got to the hotel and was about checking in,
I noticed my wallet (which contained my passport,ATM card, some money and
other valuables) was not with me again. I talked to the Hotel manager who
out of pity saw that i was a foreigner allowed me with the condition that
i would pay before he allows me take any of my belongings out when i want
to finally leave. I explained to him that i would contact my friends and
families to help me.

I am currently very broke and the pay day from the deal i am having is
scheduled for this next month end, I have no where to go, no where to
run to and no one to help me, please i want to ask for your assistance
cause there is no one else i can turn to, hope you understand. I would
hope and pray you would be considerate enough to help me,Please i would
like you to help me with the sum of $2500 to help me get my flight
rearrangement and settle my hotel bills so i can get back to the country. I
promise will get your money returned as soon as i get back to the country.

The email didn't go straight to my junk-email folder like most Nigerian scam emails, the thing that made me really suspicious (other than the mention of Nigeria) was that I was amazed he could fit his passport in his wallet.

I found another site that has a copy of the note, the author of that site says his email account was hacked and the email was sent out by someone other than him.

http://www.deanesmay.com/2008/08/18/i-a ... n-nigeria/

[oliviar]

I get emails like this all the time, I don't know how they get my email.

[Pottapaug1938]

Well, I don't know anyone who is this illiterate and yet can get over to Nigeria on business....

[fortinbras]

An American who finds himself in these circumstances is supposed to be able to get help from the US diplomatic mission wherever he happens to be.

[Cathulhu]

Fortinbras is correct. A real American citizen in such trouble would simply need to contact American Citizen Services at the embassy or consulate.

[notorial dissent]

I would have thought that the bad, and terribly stilted, grammar would have been more than enough to blow it, but maybe that's just me. In any event, any business man who is doing that kind of traveling would just call their home office and get it resolved, and certainly wouldn't email a business acquaintance for crying out loud.

[Kestrel]

I received the following email that appeared to be from a customer of mine, it came from a customer's email address and included his full name at the end of the email.

The scam email was tailored to include your customer's personal information?

He needs to check his computer(s) for viruses.

I found another site that has a copy of the note, the author of that site says his email account was hacked and the email was sent out by someone other than him.

Hacked? More likely he downloaded a nasty worm or trojan. I've seen it happen before, too many times. It didn't happen to me, of course, but I helped clean up the mess when a few friends were just a little bit too trusting and opened strange email attachments or clicked on the links embedded in strange looking emails.

[Kestrel]

I get emails like this all the time, I don't know how they get my email.

It's not you. Your email address was probably harvested from someone else's address book by a computer virus on their computer, or from a chain-mail message forwarded by a gullible friend. If you ever posted your email address on a public webpage, an internet "spider" has already picked it up. Once you're on a scammer's spam list you're there forever.

Another friend of mine would broadcast her entire email address book (including my address) to the world by forwarding email chain-mails. You know the ones - please add your name to a pointless petition, or forward a "blessings and love" email to 20 friends - QUICK - and watch the blessings flow back to you.

Unfortunately, gullible folks who forward such tripe seldom think that by hitting "forward" they automatically add to the message body the email addresses of all previous recipients of the message. And they neither delete those previous recipients' info from the body of the message, nor think to use the BCC option when adding their own friends to the message.