Fighting Racism, HIV/AIDS, and Poverty?
drt on Oct 26 2007 at 10:41 am | Filed under: Astronomy, Blog, Human Interest, Joke, Scam
Recently most of the letters from Nigeria scammers went into the junk mail folder or recyle bin directly, but this one went thru since it was from someone I knew. It takes few phone calls and emails to figure out that this was yet another scam. I wish I had googled it first before contacting all my friends who also received the same email.
When I first saw this email, my first reaction was, no way! What an Astronomy Professor has to do with fighting racism, HIV/AIDS, and Poverty? But ok, who knows. I knew he had a wide scope of interests in the Social Science area, so may be he turned into this after his retirment! However, since English was not the first option should he have to write me, I really didn’t think that it was him. My biggest concern wasn’t he was really stucked in Lagos, Nigeria, but I just wanted to let him know that someone has got into his address book or his parted laptop.
If you wonder what I’m talking about, just google the title and you will find various reports of these Nigeria letters. In that way, you would not be surprised in the future if you receive an email from someone you know saying:
Hello, How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn’t inform you about my traveling to West Africa, Nigeria for a program called “Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa , South Africa,Ghana and Nigeria, i am schedule to use 5 days here. It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain.
You will find various reports from many victims of this scam in the search result. The search result of “196.1.176.195″ from X-Originating-IP: [196.1.176.194] from the email header as well as ‘whois’ service all pointed this site to Nigeria.
Popularity: 61% [?]
This is a quote from an email I just received. I have talked to Dr. Hidayat over the phone and I will update the story in the near future.
[...] other day I wrote about the email from Nigeria, which turned out to be a failed phishing expedition originating from this [196.1.176.194] IP [...]
I just got one of those. Many things were suspect, starting with the “fact” that a born and raised Anglo-Texan would write in non-idiomatic English.
funny i just got this one i first i was like poor thing but then i read it again and said to myself this sounds kind og bogus - so i goggles the title and sure enough it was a hoax.
see the letter i got
Hello,
How are you doing today? I am sorry that i have to inform you that i traveled to Africa for a program called “Empowering Youth to Fight 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 as 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 $800 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 $1100 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $2000 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 Western Union.
Please i want this to be between me and you because when the time comes i would tell you the essence of this because if i do now it would be no more a secret.and do me a favor don’t talk about this on phone at all unless i call you about it just send me emails and don’t talk about it on phone.
Best Regards,
Diane.
I just GOT scammed, too!! It was through my Yahoo…I’ve reported it to: Yahoo, Western Union. Will report it to the Embassy of Nigeria and to the Federal Trade Commission…
Let me know what ELSE happens…
Rhonda
I had forwarded on to me the other day a message from someone I know, that someone was using my email address, birdy454@yahoo.com.au but the thing was they are also using my name, stating they are in Africa and to please send money as they are stranded and can’t pay the hotel bill. Not only can I not get into my email address anymore, but I can’t get into my blog either, had to rejoin all the groups I was with, and get new email address. But the real issue is they are using MY name to try and extort money. The password I had over a year is changed, to get a new one? my info has been changed also, so can’t. I just hope they get caught, and soon.
Judy,
Was this situation ever resolved? I’ve just received an email like this from my friend and I responded to it asking her for a phone number I could contact her on. I sincerely hope that I don’t lose my email address and blog - that would be a nightmare!!
What happened with this? I’ve just responded to one I got from my “friend”. It was this hoax and I’m very worried that I’ll lose my email and blog, this would be disaster for me and my business.
I’m very interested to know if Yahoo are protecting their account holders.
I just received the same email from a friend i hadn’t heard from in years. Was immediately suspicious but like the rest of you wanted to help him out. Thankfully I decided to google the conference he was talking about and voila got into this site. So thanks for the warning. Can anyone tell me who to report this to? The person left a physical address in the UK, as part of his email.
I just receive the same email that everybody had it.Lucky i call my friend which from his email address and he told me that the whole email address of him have been block and he have to create new email address so everybody pls beware of this.
Well friends, they hacked my fathers account and I then I did some scambaiting with the hacker. He/she sent me all the details where to send the money.
I sent all the conversation to Yahoo but yahoo is insisting on asking my security question etc but that might have also been changed by Hacker!
Guess Yahoo should take this issue a little more seriously!
azhar
Mine hails from Asia. A friend I know during my days in Japan sent our mailing list this very e-mail. The continent was changed into Asia and the countries were Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. I was so upset and worried about her kids back in Korea but then before I try to do anything, I wanted to try googling the whole “Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education” thing and here it is.
Now I’m warning the folks in the mailing list.
I got one of these, too! It was from a hacked email account from my son’s English teacher!! The poor grammar and demanding tone of the email gave it away! When she discovered the scam, she was horrified, not only by the demands for money, but by the grammatical errors… too funny!