Urban Legends. Superstitions. Ghost Stories. Folklore. Creative Writing. Observations. Stuff.

Nigerian Scam: "Barely literate UK barrister" variant

Barry Williams, Supreme Universal Skeptic Of The 12th Magisterial Order [1], has sent in another interesting variant of the infamous Nigerian Scam.

As Barry mentions in his email:

Murray

I despair for the continuing deterioration of literacy among barristers admitted to the bar in the UK.

Barry

I can understand Barry’s emotional distress, since the email asks you to believe that it has been sent by a barrister located in the UK, while simultaneously being pockmarked with a truly impressive variety of misspellings and grammatical errors.

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Footnotes:
1.And owner-operator of the Barry Williams Blog.
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The Nigerian / 419 Scam

An email lands in your inbox promising immense riches, if only you will help someone in a distant country transfer some money that has been left forgotten in an account for years. It’s called the Nigerian Scam, and it has cost the gullible and unwary millions of dollars.

Join me in the ulblog forensic accountacy department as we learn more about this surprisingly successful con game.

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I first wrote about the Nigerian Scam [1] back in July of 2001 on the ULRC site. It wasn’t by any means a new scam then, but the Internet was still rapidly expanding, and vast numbers of people were still making their way online for the first time, and were being exposed - at an alarming rate - to a scam the majority of them had never heard of before.

Almost six years later, and it appears that the Nigerian Scam is still going strong.

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Footnotes:
1.Also known as an Advanced Fees Fraud and the 419 Scam, after the relevant section in the Nigerian criminal code that covers fraud operations such as these.
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