Nigerians & Scam artists in full swing this morning.

[Dogza]

I've received 2 calls and 4 emails from nigerians and other scam artists in just the last 3 hours..

The first phone call was the best though.. He said all I need to do is pay him $20,000 and my product will be showcased in 85 million homes on the "Widget" shopping network... I checked the Domain Name he gave me to visit and it was just registered 2 months ago LOL.

[Easy_Coder]

I'm not trying to spook you Dogza but if they call you again, I'd let the authorities know.

There was an absolutely bizarre story this weekend on foxnews about a man who dissapeared in California last week while being chased through a rivine at 3:45am.

While being chased he managed to contact a friend with his cellphone. The mans friends and family are indicating that he had contact with one of these nigerian fraud artists and thought that's who might be chasing him. He still has not been found.

The LA Times is also running the story here:
[latimes.com...]

[Dogza]

We get calls like this every few months.. I just thought it was strange to get so many in one morning.. That story in your post is amazing.. I'm always shocked when I hear about people falling for scams like that.

[Easy_Coder]

It gets even stranger... I just saw on boing boing that they found this man buck naked washing his jeans in the river. What the ^@$@*&%!

Weird story. Glad they found him though. Maybe he smoked the nigerian peace pipe and got a little 'howl at the moon' in him?

[hunderdown]

The latest story about that missing music producer, now found, made it pretty clear that he was delusional. I seriously doubt that he had had any more contact with a nigerian fraudster than one of those standard emails--which then became the outlet for his delusion. Sad story, but not an indication of a change in tactics by Nigerian scammers!

[zCat]

Is this a new scam or what?

Yup. They've been doing the rounds in Europe, apparently some kind of fraud and / or money-laundering operation using the bank accounts of gullible receivees. Some may be connected with phishing operations, i.e. funds from the "phished" account (a) are transferred to the gullible persons account (b), who then transfers most of this to the fraudster (c), presumably by wire transfer etc.. The transaction between (a) and (b) will usually be rolled back once noticed, but not between (b) and (c), leaving the middleman out of pocket and the fraudsters richer by the same amount.

[Morgenhund]

A couple of years ago one Nigerian guy decided to study German in one of Germany's language schools. Paid by credit card for a 8-weeks course. Not pretty original, and CC was stolen, of course (what was found out a little later).

What was further, after a couple of days guy decided not to continue his classes and asked the school to return the rest of unused money. In cash, of course. They did.

Do not know if this method of funds withdrawal is widely known. Just my $0.02.