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  #1  
Old October 9th, 2004, 05:43 PM
.unknown. .unknown. is offline
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Strange Email - Adopting Overseas

I received this email today and i can't quite understand why someone would do this but maybe theres more to it... unfortunatley the dog is no longer with us...but yeah strange. I believe he got my email address from Petfinder.ca or this site...


Dear Sir/Ma,
I am a Veterinary Doctor From Africa
with clients all over West African countries and UK
cities, we also run many zoo in some African cities
and London towns. I have Clinics in most west African
and UK Cities. I can assure you that your pet is not
going for experiment or going to end up in Lab.
testing. I have a client who's interested in your
lovely pet and also willing to pay me anything i
charged to bring it to his lovely home, he's a pet
lover and we pay him visit every week for treatment to
all his pets. I will need to know some certain things
that gets the pet anoyed and things that gets it
aggressive.
Inrespect of
payment i have a client in the USA who he has agreed
to procure a Cashier's check or postal money order for
($5,500
US) which he's oweing me to you. All i need to do to
make payment easier and faster is to instruct him to
procure a cashier's check or Postal Money Order and
mail it to you on the address and name you want on the
check or Postal money order. But i would want to know
if i can trust you to send the remainder of the funds
to my shipper via Western union Money
Transfer, as soon as the check or postal money order
get cashed so that my shipper will make arrangement
for the pick up at your location to deliver it to my
client's home, he will need this money to secure
flight tickets to North and South America to pick all
the Animal i Adopted and deliver all to thier
different homes in UK. I will like you to
mail me asap to enable me arrange payment.
Furnish me with the name you want on the check or
postal money order, your home address as in
zipcode,city,etc and your contact phone number, so I
can forward it to my client who will purchase the
check or postal money order for the payment.
If you have any question or enquiry to make about
this.
You can reach me on phone number
Thank you
Dr. Brown
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  #2  
Old October 9th, 2004, 07:19 PM
lilith_rizel's Avatar
lilith_rizel lilith_rizel is offline
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That is a weird message. I don't know what to think. STRANGE!
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  #3  
Old October 9th, 2004, 07:38 PM
MBRA518 MBRA518 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lilith_rizel
That is a weird message. I don't know what to think. STRANGE!
Not strange... that is a common scam.

Many people who advertise something on the net get those - they seem to be common with horses ads. The scam is that they send you a fake money order and then you send them the remainder in a real money order - and you are out the money... I have never heard of them actually coming for the animal - they just scam you out of the money.
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  #4  
Old October 9th, 2004, 07:46 PM
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lilith_rizel lilith_rizel is offline
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I have never seen it before. So I thought it was strange. I am happy to find out that it is a scam. Just incase I ever come across it in the future. Thanks for saying what you had to say.
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  #5  
Old October 9th, 2004, 09:23 PM
Lucky Rescue Lucky Rescue is offline
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Very common scam. The last one I got asked me for my bank account #, so that some doctor in Africa could deposit 100,000.00 USD in it because blah blah blah. And of course, for helping out, I would be paid handsomely.

I emailed back and told them I had no bank account, so could they please send me cash instead.
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  #6  
Old October 10th, 2004, 09:30 AM
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raingirl raingirl is offline
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It's acutally called a "419 scam" as the people doing these scams are often from Nigeria and down there they are prosecuted under section 419 of their criminal code.

In my job I am currently handling a file that is being investigated for this type of fraud.

If you do a search on the internet, you will see a ton of people who have fun leading these 419er on, pretending to do the things they say. The ones with the pictures are hilarious.

There are lots of police organizations investigating these letters. If you are in Canada, call the RCMP office in your area and tell them you got one. There is place you should forward the e-mail too so they can investigate it, but I cna't remember it right now.
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  #7  
Old October 10th, 2004, 10:00 AM
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Sneaky2006 Sneaky2006 is offline
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There are so many scams going around right now, it's sick!
My sister recently got one, saying because she had the same last name as someone who passed (and they couldn't find any family there), that she was going to get the entire estate, it was supposedly coming from a lawyer who wanted a cut. This was from Nigeria... everything looked to legit, so proper, how do they come up with this crap?
This was for millions!!!
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  #8  
Old October 10th, 2004, 10:26 AM
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raingirl raingirl is offline
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Down there they have lawyers, government officials, gangs, everyone in on it.

The people who scam these people back are called "baiters". They pretend they are interested, they give them fake info (like fake bank stuff, fake pictures, etc) and see how far the people in Nigeria will go. It's hilarious what they make them do.

I read about a couple in florida who gave away their entire savings to scammers. To this day they refuse to beleive they were scammed, even though the police arrested their "friends" who took their money. It's sad. They say that americans alone have lost hundreds of millions to these people.
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  #9  
Old October 10th, 2004, 10:41 AM
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badger badger is offline
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http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/

Check out this website. Is there nothing they won't try? But you're right, corruption is a way of life in Nigeria. Beware!!
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  #10  
Old October 10th, 2004, 02:12 PM
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chico2 chico2 is offline
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I've never heard of this,but as long as there are greedy people out there,on both sides,people will be scammed...maybe one in a thousand e-mails will get a response and money,but well worth it for the crooks.
I would be ashamed to admit I fell for such a scam
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  #11  
Old October 10th, 2004, 02:20 PM
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Catt31 Catt31 is offline
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I get at least three a week - the latest was from some woman who's husband was ill, and she needed our support or something. I don't even read them anymore!! How do they get our emails??? What a crock of ****T!!! It makes me angry that my email spam filter doesn't catch these ones - stupid shaw!!
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  #12  
Old October 10th, 2004, 03:54 PM
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glasslass glasslass is offline
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Another going around is an authentic looking request from a bank or Ebay saying they need to verify your account information to prevent fraud. Then they ask for your account #'s, logon name and password. Some people actually fall for it and give them the works!
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  #13  
Old October 11th, 2004, 09:36 AM
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Catt31 Catt31 is offline
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I also got a very official looking one from CitiBank, and I was reading through it thinking I had an account with them (I don't, its citifinancial..duhhh) but thought, uh oh....maybe I will call them. I wouldn't have sent the info they wanted, account #, password, etc. unless I had called them first. Most banks and financial institutions will call if they need to talk to you urgently.

We also got one from our IP - shaw - saying they needed to have our account # and password to withdraw funds to pay our bill (our bill was paid up) and I thought "screw you guys"...and called them and found out it was a fraud!! People who have too much time on their hands!!! GRRRRR!!!
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Chris ~~ ZOO OWNER
1 dog - Brick
2 cats - Spunky & Tux
1 very mean tiger barb (who killed all of our other fish)
3 leopard geckos - Dave, Jenn & Jane (gone back to their original owner)

GONE TO CRITTER HEAVEN:
1 house gecko - George (RIP)
2 giant african land snailS - Kaimah (RIP) & Kamau (RIP)
2 baby african land snails - Tiny & Pokey (RIP)
1 Veiled Chameleon - Chip (RIP)
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  #14  
Old October 11th, 2004, 09:47 AM
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Princesss04 Princesss04 is offline
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Man, I hae never heard of those people. But, I do remeber getting an Email from the citibank or something like that. The said part is that alot of people have never heard and will fall into these traps.
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  #15  
Old October 11th, 2004, 11:26 AM
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glasslass glasslass is offline
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I first heard about these scams on a radio talk show. When I got one, I knew it was a scam, but it really did look official. So much so that I immediately sent an email to my hubby to let him know he would be dead meat if he got one and responded to it!
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  #16  
Old October 12th, 2004, 07:54 AM
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raingirl raingirl is offline
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There are programs people write that "make up" e-mails. They take popular
e-mails like hotmail or yahoo, and the programs with send millions of e-mails to address combinations just in case they might exist.

I have an e-mail I use for all internet sign ups (like BBS's and contests) because even though they say they don't sell the e-mails, some do anyway. I gete over 800 pieces of spam daily at that account. Because it's my old university account, and the way the e-mails are (they are firstname.lastname@university.ca or firstinitial.lastname@university.ca) they just have the program make up combinations. It's actually really easy to write a program like that.
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