Here's what I got in my email today...

From MR ABEL LUAWA

Dear Sir,
I am Mr. MR ABEL LUAWA and my sister is Miss ROSE LUAWA, we are the
childrenof late SAM LUAWA from Sierra Leone. I am writing you in absolute
confidence primarily to seek your assistance to transfer our cash of
twenty one Million Dollars ($21,000.000.00) now in the custody of a
private Security trust firm in Europe the money is in trunk boxes deposited
and declared as family valuables by my late father as a matter of fact
the company does not know the content as money, although my father made
them to under stand that the boxes belongs to his foreign partner.

My late father Chief SAM LUAWA,a native of Mende District in the
Northerh province of Sierra Leone, was the General Manager of Sierra Leone
Mining co-operation (S.L.M.C.) Freetown . According to my father, this
money was the income accrued from Mining Co-operation's over draft and
minor sales.

Before the peak of the civil war between the rebels forces of Major
Paul
Koroma and the combined forces of ECOMOG peace keeping operation that
almost destroyed my country, following the forceful removal from power
of the civilian elected President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah by the rebels. My
father had already made arrangement for his family thats talking about
my mother, my little sister and myself to be evacuated to Abidjan Cote
d'Ivoire with the CERTIFICATE OF DEPOSIT he made with a security firm in
Europe through the aid of U.N evacuation team. During the war in my
country, and following the indiscriminate looting of Public and Government
properties by the rebel forces, the Sierra Leone mining coop. Was one
of the target looted and it was destroyed. My father including other top
Government functionaries were attaked and killed
by the rebels in November 2000 because of his relationship with the
civilian Government of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah.

As a result of my father's death , and with the news of my uncle's
involvement in the air crash in Januaryit dashed our hope of survival. The
untimely deaths caused my mother's heart failure and other related
complications of which she later died in the hospital after we must have
spent a lot of money on her early this year . Now my 18 years old sister
and myself are alone in this strange country suffering without any care
or help. Without any relation, we are nowlike refugees and orphans. Our
only hope now is in you and the boxes deposited in the Security Firm To
this effect,

I humbly solicit your assistance in the followings ways.

1. to assist me claim this boxes from the security Firm as our
beneficiary

2. to transfer this money (USD$21M) in your name to your country

3. to make a good arrangement for a joint business investment on our
behalf in your country and you, our Adviser/ Manager For your assistance,
I have agreed with my younger sister that 20% of the total amount will
be for your effort and another 5 % to cover all the expenses that may
incure during the business transaction, Last, I urge you to keep this
transaction strictly confidential as no one knows ourwhere about.

Please as you show your willingness, Forward to us your full name,
address and Tel/ Fax numbers, to me via my private email address as
indicated bellow,this is for security reasons as i will only be accessing my
private email earnestly awaiting your response.
                                          luawaabel@tiscali.co.uk
Thanks.
May God bless you as you assist us.

MR ABEL LUAWA.


Makes me want to mess with them ;D

I must get 2 or 3 of those a week.   They're gonna have a long wait!    ;D :D

LOL... ;D I got that one yesterday as well as second different one. I opted for the following (2nd) as it was 25,000,000 iinstead of only 21,000,000  :D

Dear friend,

I am contacting you to front as a co-owner of my late
husband's company and beneficiary of funds
(US$25,000,000.00) due the company.

I am currently a high ranking government official in
the ruling cabinet of President Thabo Mbeki (South
Africa). I am a widow and mother of two children.My
late husband Mr Ronald Tshabalala died 1996.

After his death, I recently discovered that an
over-invoiced proceeds of a contract I helped his
company secure is yet to be paid out by the Reserve
Bank of South Africa. Presently the funds can be
paid out by South Africa's offshore bank in Amsterdam.

This funds emanated as a result of an over-invoiced
contract which my husband's company executed with the
Government of South Africa.I am afraid that the
government of South Africa might start to investigate
on contracts awarded from 1995 to date. If they
discover this money is yet unclaimed with my husband's
name linked to it, the government will confiscate the
money and seize his assets here in South Africa and
this will definitely affect my political career in
Government.

I want your assistance to front as a co-owner of his
company (Tshabalala Construction, LTD) to facilitate
the release of the funds.be rest assured that I
will use my position to approve the immediate release
of the entitlement here in South Africa and then you
can make claim in the off shore payment office in Holland.

As soon as the funds is release to your name, you are
expected to move it immediately into your personal bank
account in your country.
As soon as you have confirmed receipt of the funds
into your account, I will arrange to meet with you.

If you agree to my proposal, please endeavour to send
me an urgent reply.
Due to my sensitive position in the South African
Government, I would not want you to phone or fax me.

You can give my close family friend a call in HOLLAND his
name is Barrister harris Mark; he is a lawyer, and
he will tell you more about this business,
His tel number is +31-629-382-459

He will be assisting our intrest  and all necessary quarters.
All future correspondence must be made either to him or
myself.

I am reposing huge trust on you regardless of your
being a total stranger. Upon your reply, we shall
dicuss your percentage for your assistance.

Because of my sensitive position as serving government
official, I will only give you more details of myself
when we proceed further and I am sure of your
sincerity.

Thank you and God Bless.

Stella Sigcau

Honesty and transparency, they are my best work tools.

Remember to call the Lawyer, hiscontacts are,
BARRISTER HARRIS MARK
TEL- +31-629-382-459

And, they keep calling me "sir" :P



Nice to meet you Sir  :)

I've been looking to see if I could find some more informtaion on some guy in the UK who decided to bluff one of these e-mails.  He said he would help them only if they converted to his religion.  They said that they would and he exchanged several e-mails with them setting up a ceremony of some sort.  I think he even met one of them but never managed to secure the final deal.

I checked out the snopes.com page to see if they had anything on the story.  They didn't but they did have a link to a page which details how you should report this scam to your fraud office and to their e-mail provider.  Here's the link

http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/

Not sure if it's worth the bother myself.  I just tend to trash the e-mail.

guess I'm not worth as much to them as you, 21,000,000 is the most I've gotten so far.  And, they keep calling me "sir" :P




Not necessarily you are guaranteed 25%.  Even though the money involved with him is 4 million more, his percentage may be smaller since its to be discussed.  You could very well be worth more.

they keep calling me "sir" :P



So you must be one of those 65 year old fat guys "Posing" as a family oriented, fantastic wife and mother ???

;D ;D ;D  I'm sure hubby will be happy to hear that one ;D ;D ;D

Well, I hope he appreciates my sense of humor as much as he should appreciate YOU ;)

I've been looking to see if I could find some more informtaion on some guy in the UK who decided to bluff one of these e-mails.  He said he would help them only if they converted to his religion.  They said that they would and he exchanged several e-mails with them setting up a ceremony of some sort.  I think he even met one of them but never managed to secure the final deal.

I checked out the snopes.com page to see if they had anything on the story.  They didn't but they did have a link to a page which details how you should report this scam to your fraud office and to their e-mail provider.  Here's the link

http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/

Not sure if it's worth the bother myself.  I just tend to trash the e-mail.

It is always a bad idea to answer spam in any way.

I have received a few of these spam-o-grams myself.  The first time I saw it I thought it was beyond absurd that the widow of the deposed dictator of Nigeria would email me for any reason, let alone holding a royal fortune for her.  I couldn't imagine anybody would believe such a scam for instant.  Yet, people do.  Thousands of people have been defrauded this way.  Some have even traveled to dangerous regions of Africa in pursuit of the widow-in-distress!
::)

I get e-mails from Nigeria and about a deceased relative whose last name is Starr and we don't even have a relative living in Nigeria. >:( ::)



Howard

I've been looking to see if I could find some more informtaion on some guy in the UK who decided to bluff one of these e-mails.  He said he would help them only if they converted to his religion.  They said that they would and he exchanged several e-mails with them setting up a ceremony of some sort.  I think he even met one of them but never managed to secure the final deal.



I think there was a link on the old board to a website like what you're talking about.  I read some of the correspondence and it was hilarious!!!


Ah, that's where I read it.  I couldn't even recall where I'd heard about it!

I get e-mails from Nigeria and about a deceased relative whose last name is Starr and we don't even have a relative living in Nigeria. >:( ::)



Howard

I would love to dump Ken Starr in the wilds of Nigeria.  Unfortunately, contrary to myth, there are no head-hunting cannibals there.

Haven't really gotten the scams just the SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM. Most of it misspelled porn. Something like "hot grls wnat sxe" or something like that so my spam filter won't read it. But, actually most of it does end up in my spam file-but I still have to delete them.



Cat

I got an eBay phishing scam in my hotmail today. I knew something was up with this email when they included a link that wanted my username and password. I sent it to eBay and they just confirmed that it was a scam. Here's the email:

Fraud Alert ID : 00626654

Dear eBay member,

You have received this email because you or someone else had used your identity to make false purchases on eBay. For security reasons, we are required to open an investigation on this matter. We treat online fraud seriously and all cases which cannot be resolved between eBay and the other involved party are forwarded for further investigations to the proper authorities. To speed up this process, you are required to verify your personal information against the eBay account registration data we have on file by following the link below.

http://scgi.ebay.com/verify_id=ebay&user=00626654

Please save this fraud alert id for your reference.

When submitting sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line. When our registration/order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number and/or social security number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - SSL.

Please Note - If your account informations are not updated within the next 72 hours, we will assume this account is fraudulent and it will be suspended. We apologize for this inconvenience, but the purpose of this verification is to ensure that your eBay account has not been fraudulently used and to combat fraud.

We apreciate your support and understading, as we work together to keep eBay a safe place to trade.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Regards, Safeharbor Department (Trust and Safety Department)
eBay Inc.

It looked very realistic, but I had a hunch that this wasn't right. :)

Nice catch on the e-bay scam Jessica and 80s_cheerleader. A while back I got an e-mail @ work that also mentioned a username and password that said it was from our admin, only thing is it looked funny b/c his name showed up different and was spelled wrong. Turns out we had a virus in our system.

I would love to dump Ken Starr in the wilds of Nigeria.  Unfortunately, contrary to myth, there are no head-hunting cannibals there.



What it was Maxwell was Princes from Nigeria telling me that they are coming to my country & put money in my bank account. ::)



Howard