Three Plead Guilty in Nigerian Spam Scheme

From PC World
Grant Gross, IDG News Service
Saturday, February 02, 2008 8:00 AM PST

Three people have pleaded guilty to charges related to spam e-mail that promised U.S. victims millions of dollars from an estate and a lottery, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

In one scenario, the defendants sent e-mails purporting to be from an individual suffering from terminal throat cancer who needed assistance distributing approximately US$55 million to charity, the DOJ said.

The three defendants, two from Nigeria and one from Senegal, sent spam e-mail to thousands of potential victims, in which they falsely claimed to control millions of dollars located abroad, the DOJ said in a press release. The fraud victims lost $1.2 million by giving the defendants advance fees, the DOJ said.

read more

Click on the thumbnail of the letter above and you will see a scam letter I received today where I am notified, in a rather clumsy way, by purported World Bank Auditors that I am the lucky winner of 12 million eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That is what those letters usually look like. They ask for personal information and once you provide it, they get in touch with you to ask for some sort of payment to cover their expenses or something like that.

As much as we may want to dream and fantasize that a scenario like that is within the realm of the possible, bottom line is that there is no such thing as a "free lunch" to use that old cliche. If it sounds too good to be true, chances are that it is a scam.