THE TOP 5 NAMES USED BY SCAMMERS
Advance Fee Fraud Scammers are notorious for impersonating their national public figures. Their reasons are obvious: using the name of a well-known and respected personality is intended to impress, even awe their prospective victims. Yes, this strategy does work occasionally, as some victims will admit.
Sanusi Lamido/Tunde Lemo/Godwin Emefiele/Charles Soludo. These 4 are either current or past Governors/Deputy Governors of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)…and one of them has emailed little old you a lucrative business proposal. Wow! Like a scene from ‘Goldfinger’, you can imagine the well-guarded CBN vault door slowly swinging open for you to step through and fill your bag with gold bars and banknotes…..but wait! The Honorable gentleman requires some money from you first. Well, even great men run out of pocket money every now and again…..don’t they?
Goodluck Jonathan, President of Nigeria. Well! What do you know? Mister Pres himself has taken time out of his onerous duties to personally send you an email! Look! He wants to enter into a partnership with you. Millions of Nigerian Naira are sat in an account with your name on. All you have to do is send the wealthy President a few hundred US Dollars. Doesn’t make sense? Well, that’s life sometimes…..
Barrister (insert name here) has a legal proposal for you. It could be that a wealthy relative you didn’t know you had has died in West Africa and left you millions. Perhaps a Government Oil contract has failed and the Barrister’s crooked civil servant pal wants you to launder the funds through your bank account. Alternatively, a millionaire philanthropist is on her death bed and her Noble Barrister advises that from billions, YOU have been chosen to distribute her funds for the sake of humanity. All you have to do is pay the respected Barrister his fee.
Coca Cola/Ford/Microsoft (etc) Lottery. Congratulations! You have won a lottery! One of the world’s largest corporations has confirmed your winning ticket number. Millions of dollars are heading your way. You just have to pay a miserly courier fee. As you fantasise about indulging your life’s desires, the fact that you never entered the lottery seems immaterial.
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of Nigeria. The EFCC investigates 419 advance fee fraud in Nigeria. How does it know that you yourself were once scammed? Well, its email states that it does know and will help you recover your stolen money. According to the email, all you have to do is send the EFCC some money by Western Union and hey presto! Your scammed funds will be repaid to you….. (just not in your lifetime).
THE MESSAGE TO YOU IS to delete these emails without reply. World Leaders, National Bankers, Barristers, and Lottery Organizers are not going to personally email you and are certainly not going to make you rich. The-Scammers-just-want-your-MONEY!