Like many people, I have received the Nigerian scam email… and the new Afghanistan and Iraq variants.  Like the vast majority of people, I shake my head and hit the delete button.  I have no idea how someone can think that there really is a legitimate reason for them to send their bank info to some unknown person, or that if they do, they will get millions of dollars for “facilitating” some transaction.

But now there is a new wrinkle…

To whom it may concern,

We have nabbed a syndicate of fraudsters who specializes in document forgery, impersonation and using of fictitious offices and clandestine phone, fax and emails to defraud innocent people. On interrogation, we promised these syndicate that if they confess their victims, that we will help them reduce their jail terms. Based on this promise we made to them, they provided your email address as one of their victims. We don’t know if their testimony that they defrauded you is correct. If indeed you lost any money to fraudsters in the time past, please notify us with immediate effect. We have recovered enormous amount in their accounts. We have also seized and sold all their houses, companies, expensive cars, stocks and shares they bought with their ill gotten wealth for the purpose of paying back their victims what they lost. Their victims as they enlisted are so many that all the money we realized from the sale of their belongings including the money recovered in their account will not be enough to pay back all

Reverend Barrister Willy Bayo
Director, Centre for Cyber & Electronic Crime Control

Same poor use of the English language… same appeal to greed.

So, assuming someone sent them their bank info, only to have the account cleared out… would they do it again?

What I think would be hilarious would be to find a way to do a reverse sting and when they ping an account, have the account they ping from cleared out…

Anyway, here is the new scam.  Don’t give them your bank information.  The easiest way to do that is to just ignore them and not reply… use the ol’ delete button.