Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Nigerian e-Fail

Wonderful - I just received a modified version of the patented Nigerian e-mail scam. This time the ruse goes along the lines of "We put all the names of people worldwide with internet access in a hat and your name came up with nine others, bro".

Lucky me.

Ecowas Organization, would like to notify you that you have been chosen
by the board of trustees of the above international charity
organization based in the Nigeria as one of the final Recipients of a
Cash Grant/Donation for your own personal, education and business
development, Ecowas Organization, as established 1977 by the
Multi-Million groups which aim was to Conceived with the objective of
Human Growth, Educational and Community development, In line
with the 28 years anniversary program this year the Ecowas Donation in
conjunction with the Fondazion Di Vittorio (FDV), United Nations
Organization (UNO) and the European union, is giving out a yearly donation
of Eight hundred and fifty Thousand United States Dollars ($850,000.00)
for this year 2009 Lottery promotion which is organized by Ecowas
Organization.

Ecowas Organization collects all the email addresses of the people that
are active online, among the millions that subscribed to the Internet and
we only select 10 lucky international recipients worldwide every year as
our winners through electronic balloting System without the winner
applying, we congratulate you for being one of the people selected, Ecowas
is supported by United Nations Organization (UNO) and the European union
including the Fondazion Di Vittorio (FDV), We are giving out a yearly
donation of US$850,000.00 (Eight Hundred & Fifty Thousand United States
Dollars) to each
100 lucky.

These Numbers fall within your location file, You are requested to contact
the Ecowas Finance Department and send your winning identification numbers
to him, to enable him verify your claims. You are to contact the Ecowas
Finance Department on or before your date of Claim, Winners shall be paid
in accordance with his/her Settlement Centre.

You are by all means hereby advised to keep this whole information
confidential until you have been able to collect your Donation as there
have been many cases of double and unqualified claim, due to beneficiaries
informing third parties about his/her donation.
payment-release-order-form, which you will use in collecting the funds.

I should totally give these people my bank info - it's got that "legit" look you only get from supposed international corporations with a gmail account.

5 comments:

Anders said...

Well, what can I say, they got the country right.

Wilhelm said...

Are you suggesting I did a mistake in forwarding my bank info to this fine and seemingly legit organization?

Anders said...

No, no. I'm saying that you should also forward your credit card information (both private and work). Just to be on the safe side. You know, anybody with connections with "United Nations
Organization (UNO)" must be trustworthy.

Wilhelm said...

I'm actually impressed that they managed to find a less believable version of Ye Olde "I'm a law-obiding citizen in a seventh-world country who somehow managed to get my hands on a sum of money which exceeds the GNP by a decade, but despite having internet access and the capability to send email I need someone else's bank account for money transfer. Transferring the money out of Nigeria is simple, but I'm somehow incapable of starting my own account in another bank, and even though I complain that my countrymen are corrupt, I have no problems trusting a complete stranger with 10-25% of my available funds"

Anders said...

I'm actually impressed that they managed to find a less believable version of Ye Olde

What, you don't believe in luck?
:-)

Well, I'm even more impressed by the fact that there are people actually falling for this scam.