Jan

25

Stuck in Nigerian hotel - email scam

January 25, 2008 posted by indiatime |

My friend, a well-respected doctor in an American city, opened his email account the other day and found the following email seemingly sent by one of his longtime friends who works for an NGO (non-governmental/non-profit organization). The email described the tragic situation that had befallen upon this friend on his visit to Nigeria. There was an urgent request to wire money asap as this was a ‘life and death matter’. Here’s the complete text of the email :

Hi ,How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn’t inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called “Empowering Youth to Fight against Racism,HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education”, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria . It has been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain.

I am really stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport,documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $ 1550 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management., I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1600 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $3500 to sort out my problems here?

I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don’t even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i needed your help.

I am sending you this e-mail from the city Library and I only have 30 min, I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western Union.

When my friend reached his hospital, he found that several other Indian doctors had also received similar emails. Since the sender was someone they all knew, they had opened up the email which seemed to come from his email account. It turned out that the friend was indeed traveling, but not to Africa. And of course he wasn’t stuck in a hotel or anything. He was visiting his family in India.

What to do when you receive such emails:

1. Typically, your webmail (gmail/hotmail/yahoo) will have an option to mark the email as spam. Mark it as spam, delete it, junk it.

2. Do not reply to such emails, no matter how heart-rendering the situation. If it’s worrying you a lot, call up the friend whose name appears as the sender, ask him/her if they really sent the email. But do not ever contact the sender in such cases. Even if you have received the email, the sender (the fraud artist) has no idea where you live. But if you send a reply, they can start getting clues to your identity.

3. If you get such emails in your work email, alert the IT administrator.

What to do if someone sent such an email in your name:

1. Did you recently reply to an email from Yahoo or Hotmail or Gmail asking you to confirm your password? Guess what. That email came from an organized cyber-crime syndicate in Nigeria. Remember, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, or your banks for that matter will never, I repeat, NEVER, n..e..v..e..r… ask for your password in email.

2. Immediately change your email password. Make sure to include a number and a combination of capital and small letters in the passwords. It’s better if you can throw in a special character like a ‘^’ or a ‘!’.

3. Change your email passwords regularly.

4. Use caution when using wireless connections at public places or using email accounts at internet cafes. Remember, the internet cafes can easily put keystroke logging softwares on their machines and each of your keystrokes may be getting logged.


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3 Comments so far

  1. brian on January 26, 2008 6:18 pm

    scarry that these scammers can pretend to be one of your friends.. who wouldn’t be tempted to help a friend in need?

    great advice!

    i often check my emails at http://www.scamemail.co.uk - it published most of the scams doing the rounds, but i haven’t seen this one

    brian

  2. balvant bhagat on June 6, 2008 2:06 pm

    i need help with changing my password.
    i am not having much assistance from yahoo.
    any offers ?

  3. jp on April 16, 2010 3:20 am

    i just got a similar email. iwas so worried for my friend. it so scary to think that i was one step away from sending 2500$

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