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Scam of the Month
We are aware that a number of people have received an unsolicited e mail from Mrs. Louis Estrada. the wife of the embattled ex-president of the Philippines. Her story offers a substantial amount of money in return for your co-operation.
This e-mail is a variation of the Nigerian/West African 419 fraud. In a typical '419' (advanced fee fraud) e-mail, the author purports to be a senior government or central bank official who has managed to over inflate a contract, generating a personal profit. In return for help smuggling money out of the country, the recipient is offered a percentage, usually between 10% and 30%. At first no money is requested but once a victim has been drawn in, requests are made for financial help towards legal and administrative costs. Victims have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in some cases.
The reason it is called the 4-1-9 fraud is that this is the number of the Nigerian penal code that makes it illegal.
If you have received a 419 e-mail Do not reply under any circumstances. The fraudsters have not targeted you personally, they send out 1000's of these e-mails daily to people world-wide on a random basis. You can cause them some inconvenience by forwarding a copy of the e-mail to the Internet Service Provider from where the e-mail originated in the following format.
For example:-
abuse@hotmail.com
abuse@yahoo
abuse@compuserve.com
If the e-mail contains details of the fraudsters bank accounts/addresses/telephone numbers then it should be forwarded to : www.met.police.uk/fraudalert/419whattodoif.htm
Nigerian mail scams appear in many different styles and formats and can be received by letter or e-mail. They are a constant problem. The link below, whilst dated July 2001, is a BBC news story which gives more information on this subject.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1431000/1431761.stm
Trading Standards advice is never send money - especially to receive "free" goods/prizes - you don't know what you may get in return, if anything.
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Last Modified:
23/11/2005 11:49:17
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