Treasure Valley Sheep ProducersLAGOS, NIGERIA - Online Scams |
Beware! Caution! Avoid e-mail sales with foreign buyersDo not respond to any e-mails outside of country unless you know the person. Do not accept or cash, U.S. Postal money order or any cashier checks. See the below links for more information. Two parts scam:1. Purchasing real goods at a fair price, then having you send the balance of the cashier check back to the buyer. The cashier's check is a fake, and you have to pay the bank back the full amount. Banks will deposit funds with-in 24 hours, check will come back with-in 10 days. Require 30 days hold on funds. 2. Contacting you by phone to confirm details. If you accept a collect call, you pay $25.00 per minute. If you call them back or use their special toll-free number, the charge can exceed $200.00 per minute. They are targeting everything, clothes, bikes, cars, sheep, cows, horses and etc. Scams run like this, a polite e-mail back and forth with a reasonable purchase price. He has someone in the U.S. that owes him money. He wants to have this person send you a cashier check, by FedEx, to pay for the sheep. Next e-mail he casually mentions that the money owed him is more than the price of the sheep. He suggests that the person owing him the money just send the entire amount to you and you can wire the balance to him or his shipper, so the shipping cost are cover. One Scammer Information 03/05/2003 Fraudulent Order: The operator usually places a small ($1000 or so) order, paying with a genuine cashier's check drawn on a European bank. The operator then places another, some what larger order, again paying with a genuine instrument. Then, you receive an order by DHL. Your Nigerian partner urgently needs a large quantity of your product air-shipped. Confident in your partner, you ship, but, this time, the cashier's check (which looks the same) is a fake. Experienced U.S. business people today usually require either full payment in advance of shipment or an irrevocable letter of credit confirmed by a U.S. bank. Or they,Business Opportunity: The operator convinces you to explore a business opportunity by visiting Nigeria. Once you arrive, the operator takes charge of your life, trying to keep you from contacting friends, family, or the U.S. Embassy. By various means, sometimes including violence or threats of violence, the operator extracts money from you. This type of scam becomes particularly dangerous for a victim who has entered Nigeria without a valid Nigerian visa, issued by a Nigerian Embassy or Consulate. All travelers must have a visa prior to arrival in Nigeria and must pass through immigration formalities upon entry into the country. Letters addressed to immigration officials have no validity. Anyone telling you otherwise is either misinformed or a scam artist.
News Update 02/2004: eweek.com Nigeria has recently stepped up its efforts to eradicate the scam, which taints its image abroad. The Central Bank of Nigeria denies any connection to the scammers, and Nigerian agencies have been placing warning advertisements in international newspapers for years. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this month, Nigeria's finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, reissued a statement promising to crack down on the scammers. |
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Treasure Valley Sheep Producers 7668 Drylake Road Nampa, Idaho 83686 E-mail: info@tvsp.org |
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