An update on the Nigerian prince scam

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.