"Letter in respect to my deceased client"

These Nigerian scammers are really putting some work in!

[Receptional Andy]

I'm more than used to email scams (especially advance-fee fraud - I've seen enough of 'em ;))

This one came with the subject above, mentioning the name of someone with the same surname as me. It contained a scanned letter in PDF format, on headed notepaper from what appears to be a law firm in Nigeria that actually exists.

The pitch is that they are trying to locate dead relatives in order to hand over large amounts of inheritance cash. They want name and address details to check if I'm the relative (something tells me I might get lucky!).

The surname thing got my attention, as it's a level of personalisation I haven't really seen from the 411-ers (harking back to the days when they used the postal service, I guess!). And a scanned, legal-looking letter is a big improvement on past attempts. At first I thought it would be an attempted PDF-exploit although it wasn't.

The whole thing had an encouraging level of subtlety (it even had the same name in the email and throughout the letter), so thumbs up for effort, boys! Given a decade or so and a crash course in spelling, and I might even be tempted to start scam-baiting ;)

[D_Blackwell]

Yes, I've gotten a couple of these recently. The usual 'move money out of the country' scam, but fully personalized to my full name. Obviously a complete scam, but with a slicker, more believable pitch, they could really start reeling people in.

[thecoalman]

The best one I got and I'm still trying to figure out how it works is one that came urging you to use the contact phone number. Out of curiosity I looked up the phone number and it was legitimate residential phone number. I received two of these and each had a different phone number.

I guess the phone number could have been fraudulently obtained but still...

[wheel]

Coalman, perhaps that wasnt' fraud but instead a way of getting revenge on someone. Spam their phone number.

[pageoneresults]

And a scanned, legal-looking letter is a big improvement on past attempts.

A picture is worth a thousands words. Anything to increase the return by .0000000001% :)

Just wait until they get Ms. Dewey on their side. Oh boy...

[londrum]

not that i want to help these guys... but they'd have better luck if they moved country. how many people are likely to have relatives in nigeria?

[Marcia]

I got an email with marcia, marcia, marcia (yes, 3x) and the URL of a deceased client in the subject line, but deleted it accidentally in bulk folder. I've been curious since, but now I bet it was something like this.

[thecoalman]

Coalman, perhaps that wasnt' fraud but instead a way of getting revenge on someone. Spam their phone number.

I got two different ones, they each had different forums. I even posted the cotents without the numbers in my forum and someone else said they got similar one.

I didn't dial the number of course, maybe it was disconnected one and they thouht you might reply then. That's about the only thing I can think of. It said call number don't reply to email...

[Old_Honky]

They want you to phone because the poor deluded Nigerians think that if you take the trouble to phone them you are halfway to being hooked. Also the idiots are supremely confident that they can talk you into it.