The Nigerian/African scam is known to Police Forces throughout the Word.

Here in the United Kingdom, it is known as 419 Fraud, and is being taken
very seriously.

Indeed one stupid British businessman in the town I live, actually
followed up on one of these messages.  He went to South Africa, "to
negotiate the precise terms", and found himself kidnapped and held to
ransom.

Fortunately in this case, it resulted in a successful prosecution.

According to the British Home Office, the average successful rip-off is
around $75,000.  So don't be tempted to respond in any way.

If you wish to investigate further, do an internet search for "419
fraud".  As short a time ago as 1998, they were in snail-mail form - see
http://www.usps.com/websites/depart/inspect/pressrel.htm for an example.

George Bell
Techno-Vision Systems Ltd




> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Justin Philips [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
> Sent: 26 May 2003 06:24
> To: [log in to unmask]
> 
> --=======57BB3B5F=======
> Content-Type: text/plain; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-7AF8556B; 
> charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
> 
> Well, that ftc address is a legitimate one and they are 
> trying to prosecute the spammers.
> 
> As to how you get them, many newsletters, mostly the shady 
> ones, rent or sell the names and addresses to 3rd parties. 
> There are also spambots or spiders that that scout all 
> webpages for the "@" and grab all the email ids it can grab. 
> Other spamers use the dictionary-like email-id gnerating 
> software, which generates addresses and send it out to 
> popular domains like hotmail, earthlink, etc.
> 
> These things are only going to get worse, so you need to use 
> filters, or get anti-spam software that will recognize and 
> delete the spam for you.
> 
> Justin
> 
> At 05:20 PM 5/24/03 -0500, you wrote:
> 
> >Hi everyone.
> >I have been getting two or three messages a day from someone in a 
> >far-off country, usually Nigeria or Angola, asking me for 
> some type of transaction.
> >I am just wondering if any one knows how the heck these things reach 
> >only designated people on the web.  I had a friend's father 
> tell me to 
> >forward all spam I receive to the following email: 
> [log in to unmask]  Having 
> >known this friend and his family for quite a while and really liking 
> >them, I trusted him and sent some junk mail I received to 
> the address 
> >he gave me but nothing has happened.  Should I take this to 
> mean that 
> >the messages have been or are being processed and therefore 
> it was the 
> >right thing to do, or what?  In the one I just received, something I 
> >found rather interesting is that this person mentioned the 
> war in Iraq.  
> >Thanks for any possible explanation into this matter.
> >Jacob
> >
> >
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> 
> VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
> To join or leave the list, send a message to 
> [log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, 
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> 


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html