Friend of the ULBlog, Darren Saturday, sent in the following interesting variant of the infamous 419 / Nigerian Scam:

[div tale]My Dear

This is to thank you for your effort.I understand that your hands were tied.Not to worry. I have succeeded,the money has been transfered into the account provided by a newly found friend of mine in Paraguay To compensate for your past assistance and commitments,i have dropped an International Certifie Bank Draft of $1.8million for you.

I am in Paraguay with my family presently.I do intend to establish some business concerns here,and possibly buy some properties.Now Contact my Secretary in Nigeria, Mr.Bala Adamu on his email bala_sec1@yahoo.com, phone: +234 80321 16185 Forward your mailing address to him,then ask him to send the cheque to you.

Take good care of your self

Regards,
Bobby Will

(NB) Send him your full Names and Address,Tel & Fax Numbers to enable him despatch your cheque immediately[/div]

What a fascinating variant! By now, I assume most people are aware of the 419 / Nigerian Scam [1], and yet years after alerts about this scam began appearing on the Internet, it’s still being run in many different forms around the world, and new victims fall prey to it every year.

This particular variant is interesting because of the way in which it begins:

[quote]This is to thank you for your effort.I understand that your hands were tied.Not to worry. I have succeeded,the money has been transfered into the account provided by a newly found friend of mine in Paraguay To compensate for your past assistance and commitments,i have dropped an International Certifie Bank Draft of $1.8million for you.[/quote]

Yes, yes, yes! Aside from all of the misery this little bastard scam might have caused, I love the way this variant starts out by implying that a relationship already exists between the sender and recipient. Even the second sentence attempts to cement this idea — you couldn’t help [2] because your hands were tied. You obviously wanted to help, you just couldn’t!

It’s hard to imagine that anyone would fall for such an obvious ploy, but I guess it’s possible that someone might think they had received the email in error and might also believe they have a chance to cash in on a healthy dose of misplaced generosity.

Of course, this email is as much a scam as the many other variants floating around on the Internet.

Don’t forget to take a peek at the main article for this scam: The Nigerian / 419 Scam.

Oh, and don’t forget that I’m always interested in seeing new variants of this scam that you might encounter — you can send them in via the Submit an Urban Legend link.

Footnotes:

1.	Also sometimes known as the “Advanced Fees Fraud Scam”.
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2.	Entirely glossing over the fact that you never attempted to help!
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