Ever since the beginning of commerce, scams have existed.

Why? Because its often the easiest way to make money. Its quick, it doesn’t require a formal education and the payoffs can be huge. A scammer can make a phone call, get someone’s Credit Card number and charge thousands of dollars within a matter of minutes. In addition, given today’s ultra-cheap long distance charges (even less when using internet-based VOIP (Voice over IP), a scam artist can live in any country and call any country. A lot of these “third world” (a term that actually comes from the Cold War with US & Allies being “first world”, the Communists being the “second world” and everyone else neutral being third world… but I digress) countries won’t even attempt to prosecute/punish these scam artists meaning that even if you could track them down, there is nothing you can do about it. In Nigeria, home of one of the most infamous scams: the I-need-help-moving-millions-of-dollars-to-my-country scam, these scam artists are not only not punished, but are celebrated and rewarded as if they are celebrities and they often tell of their conquests publically through songs and music videos.

So, what does all of this mean to you? It means that you need to be very, very careful. You need to assume that anyone calling you out of the blue is not who they claim to be, whether they say that you’ve won the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, whether you’ve won a trip or free flight or even as small as you’ve won a $20 Walmart gift card. These are all scams.  If they were legitimate, they would not need to call you, they would simply send you your money and be done with it, but of course, that’s not the way that the scam works and they instead need you to either authorize a payment whether they call it a “transaction fee” or “tax” or “fee” or whatever. You will get nothing legitimate in return.

Speaking of which, counterfeit checks and money orders are extremely common and are very, very dangerous. Why? Because if you attempt to cash one of these legal looking documents, you will be committing a felony and will be responsible not only for returning any money you might spend from that payment but could be responsible for fees and penalties related to it. You might think that in today’s electronic, worldwide system that counterfeit checks could be identified immediately (or at least quickly) and that if you were to wait a couple of days after depositing your $1,000,000 money order and see the money available in your account that, that means that its 100% legitimate and that the money is yours. Unfortunately, that’s not the case and it might take as long as two weeks (2 weeks!) for them to identify that its not legit. Why? Well, often the money orders ARE actually legitimate… the only problem is that it often comes from a closed account or possibly a hacked bank account. Either way, there is a 0% chance that you will get the money and a 100% chance that you’re going to be in some hot water very soon after depositing that check or money order.

Here is an example of an email I received (get these type of emails daily) to demonstrate:


Business Ave BAR W19
1NR Street
London UK
Tel: +44 (0)7045761447
Fax: +44 (0)2077305085
E-mail: wllmdave31@gmail.com

Dear Friend,

I need your urgent assistance in transferring the sum of Sixty Two Million Nine Hundred and Fifty Thousand British Pounds Sterling (£62,950,000.00) to your account.

The fund has been dormant (in-active) for 7 years in our Bank here without anybody coming for it. I want to release the fund to you as the nearest person to our deceased customer (the owner of the account) who died along after a brief Illness in London. The Bank will release the fund to you as the nearest person to the deceased customer. For more information about the deceased customer you can visit this site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2956897.stm

This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential. I am sure and have confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a project of this great magnitude. I solicit your assistance to enable us transfer the said amount into your safe account for onward investment. You can either provide me with an existing bank account or to set up a new Bank account immediately to receive this money, even an empty a/c can serve to receive this money, as long as you will remain honest to me till the end of this important business, trusting in you and believing in God that you will never let me down in future when the funds will transferred into your account.

The owner of this account is a foreigner and no other person knows about this account or anything concerning it, the account has no other beneficiary and until his death he was the manager of his company. My investigation through the National immigration department and Ministries here proved to me as well that he was single during his first visit in UK. As a matter of fact, I have decided to transfer this fund abroad for investment plan.

If you are interested, please fill and forward me the following information as below to start the transfer process accordingly.

{1} Your Name/company's name and full address:.............
{2} Bank Name:..........
{3} Bank Address.........
{4} Account No:............
{5} Swift Code or Routing #
{6} Account Holder's Name: ............
{7} Your telephone Number both Home, Office &
Cell/Mobile and fax Numbers:........
{8} Your Occupation:.........
I look forward to hear from you as soon as possible if you are interested.

Regards,
Mr William Dave
Tel" +447045761447