Protect Yourself and Report the Latest Frauds, Scams, Spams, Fakes, Identify Theft Hacks and Hoaxes
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Did you receive an email from a "Mr. Michael Osa, CBN" who says "After a serious thought, I decided to reach you directly and personally because I do not have anything against you, but your partners" The scammer will to get you to cash a counterfeit check or try to steal your identity and get you to send him money, but the text of the scam is so odd, it's hard to imagine anyone falling for it. If this email out-of-the-blue from an unknown foreigner offering to pay you absurd amounts of money for almost no work doesn't strike you as a scam, then you really need to read through a number of the scams on this website and familiarize yourself with their approach.
Mr. Michael Osa, CBN (not his real name, obviously,) hopes to con you into sending money for various "fees" to free the fortune. If you would like a step by step explanation of how this type of "Advance Fee Fraud" works, click here!
Notice (highlighted below) some of the other obvious signs that this is a scam are poor spelling , use of free Yahoo/Hotmail/etc email accounts, proposals that make no sense, etc.:
From: "CBN" < osaworld12@rexian.com >
Subject: Our ref: CBN/GO/0FX02/08
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 00:02:59 +0100
Our ref: CBN/GO/0FX02/08
Dear Beneficiary
After a serious thought, I decided to reach you directly and personally because I do not have anything against you, but your partners.
I am the director of wire transfer/telex department of the CBN, some time in the past your partners approached me through a friend of mine who works with one of the ministries here and requested that I assist them conclude a money transfer deal and we all agreed.
According to them, they wanted to use this strategy to transfer a huge amount of money which they accumulated through inflated contract awards and the money has been floating in the (CBN) since the original contractors/beneficiary's has been fully paid, so they wanted to use your account to transfer the surplus out of their country. We agreed that once I do this, they would give me some percentage of the money when I released the fund to your account. When they saw that i have done that and your name has been approved among the list of those to be paid, instead of giving me the agreed deposit of amount, they started avoiding me and resorted to threats.
I immediately deleted their name among the list of those to be paid because of my position, and release other contractors/beneficiary fund without yours.
They became angry the more when they saw that their plan did not work, and started bribing other officials to get another approval to transfer the money to you without success. Approvals are free, is it not funny that a contractor/beneficiary is being asked to pay for approval while his millions is here with us? I am a hundred percent responsible for the delay and obstructions because of their breach of contract. If you doubt what i have just told you, pay any amount they will ask you to pay now, after a short time they will come up with another reason to pay again and it goes on and on. Now if you want us to work together, these are my conditions.
(i). I will have forty percent of the total sum because it is only the two of us left for now and we will share what ever expenses that may be incurred.
(ii). You will assist me to open an account in your country or any other place of my choice where I will transfer in my own share when we finalize the transaction and you confirm the fund into your account.
(iii) As you have seen, it will be useless and mere waste of money if you continue with any other person, so we will conclude the transaction with utmost secrecy and confidentialities.
If these conditions are acceptable to you, contact me as soon as possible to let us finalize all the arrangement and finalize this deal immediately without any further delay. Finally, I have made up my mind to settle down in California U.S.A, when we finalize this deal and I have started making arrangement with some estate agent to look for a four bungalow house for sale.
I look forward to have a very good business relationship with you now and in the future.
Best regards.
Mr. Michael Osa.
Director, CBN
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