Hey, remember the Nigerian prince who had money for you?
It seems like forever ago we were getting emails from that scammer, along with offers of the Paris Hilton sex tape that launched her as an international celebrity. (She is now 42, married, with a kid.)
This probably was two decades ago.
Just the other day, I got a letter — not an email — from a helpful soul who was offering to help me gain an inheritance left to me by a distant relative.
He introduced himself as an account manager with TD Canada Bank, but the letterhead seemed rudimentary and home made. He identified the bank as being in Ontario, Canada. Ontario is a province, not a city.
He said the relative, Geo Bykofsky, had died and left an estate of $9.2 million and my correspondent, Matias Edison, explained I was in line for the money.
(I decided to ignore that the letter was dated Feb. 9, 2022. Maybe the Canadian post office is worse than ours.)
He asked me to keep this discreet, that I would be the official beneficiary, and once the funds were released, they would be shared between the two of us.
A little or regular for a bank officer, don’t you think?
He then asked me to give him the green light, through his personal email address, not a bank email.
Then I would get further details, which no doubt would include him asking me to put up some money to grease the skids to get the $9.2 million to me quickly.
This was a particularly clumsy con, but I wanted to get more detail, so I wrote to him at his email address, all excited like, asking what I had to do. I also volunteered that I remembered my good old Uncle Geo. (I have no such uncle.)
I then called TD Canada Bank and was told, nope, they had no account manager named Edison, nor $9.2 million in inheritance for me.
Damn.
And Edison’s email address didn’t work.
If I want free millions, I guess I’ll have to play the Power Ball.
I pass this along because while it is a clunker, it represents one of many schemes to separate people — usually older — from their money. If it seems too good to be true, it is.
The Nigerian prince, and others promising millions are pretty easy to spot. The more insidious and downright evil attempts are the ones that seem much more plausible to those old and just naive enough. The ones that will part you with a relatively insignificant amount, from $10-$100. They do that enough and they’re the ones laughing all the way to the bank, and to the hole they crawled out of. And no, I haven’t fallen for them.
It’s sad how many older people have.
And now there is the insidious phone call from a child in trouble, needing money, sounding EXACTLY like your daughter or grandson.
That’s why I gave them all code words. If I don’t hear the code word, I know it ain’t them.
us too, since grade school. “Timmy’s in the well”, just kidding
Note that the writer of the letter is offering the money IF you are willing to claim to be a relative of the deceased — in other words, if you are willing to lie. The appeal is aimed at the one of the seven deadly sins: greed. The old saying, “You can’t cheat an honest man” is right on target. For fun, and to enjoy the taste of getting even with these bastards, I like to go online (to YouTube) and watch the IT professionals turn the tables on the liars and schemers behind these scams.
Oh, he knew I was ready to lie, by claiming I remembered the non existent relative
Damn, I guess that 20 million from the Nigerian Prince just for a $50 check is a scam too. Bummer ! Glad I used a Girard Bank Check 🙂
😁
The most current scam is the “Gift Card” scam. I got urgent phone calls and texts about the “last day” to cut my internet/cable bill in half. All I had to do was pay half the cost of 6 months billing in advance. The whole thing was very professional. Toll-free number. Press 1,2,3 etc. Talked to the rep, said sure I’d do it. They said fine, we’ve wiped your bill forthe upcoming month. I logged into my account, and what do you know, the bill was paid! Only then did they say, “This is a joint promotion with Target, so all you have to do is buy Target gift cards for the amount and give us the numbers and you’re set.” This was the tell. There is no such animal. I said, “Oh no, not going to do that.” They said, “Then we’ll have to charge you a $500 cancellation fee.” I said, “oh, this is a fraud, bye” Called my real provider. Someone hacked into my account and PAID my bill–talked to their security guy and he said it was paid with a stolen credit card. Changed all my passwords, reported the phone numbers to FTC, FBI, State Attorney General.
Simple fact: you can not use a gift card to pay anyone but the store/provider for which it is for. Paying someone else with a gift card is not a thing. Apparently the “gift card” scam is big right now.https://cointelegraph.com/explained/what-are-gift-card-scams-and-how-to-avoid-them Unlike a bank transfer, the transaction is untraceable. That’s why they do it.
Great info, thanks.
I get calls asking me to switch from PECO. I hang up.