419ers threaten terrorism charges

Advance-fee fraudsters have joined the fight against international terrorism, worried Reg reader Guy reports. The Lads from Lagos have turned their hands to money-laundering investigations, and have come up with some very grave charges against our man, which speak for themselves: ANTI-TERRORIST AND MONETARY CRIMES DIVISION …

[Pen-y-gors]

9/10?

for grammar and spelling? Nah, still reads wrong - lack of capitals, odd phraseology, I won't do more than 7/10 - room for improvement.

[Thecowking]

Oh come on!

Give them 2 points for effort and imagination.

I mean they even TELL you it's not a scam. How can you even doubt them? Me? I'm eagerly awaiting my email and millions.

[Anonymous Coward]

I often wonder

how successful something like this might be if they ever even vaguely looked like they were written by a native English speaker, who had some knowledge of the UK or US.

[Yag]

native?

Even a non-native English speaker like myself just smile at the sight of such spams...

This one is still better than the usual gibberish however.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to see...

that the "CC: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) " have time to take out of their busy schedules rebuilding inner cities and roads to help with money laundering in the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

nine out of ten for grammar and spelling?

I don't think so. Barely 5/10 for grammar. But then I am a professional writer, unlike you lot :)

[Chris Williams]

Re: nine out of ten for grammar and spelling?

We believe it's important to reward improvement.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/06/fred_the_shred/

[Matt 21]

Hmmm

You have to keep in mind that this purports to come from the US, so normal standards of grammar and spelling don't apply ;-)

[CapitalW]

Ohe Reeley??

@ Matt21: "You have to keep in mind that this purports to come from the US, so normal standards of grammar and spelling don't apply ;-)"

Wuja meen normel standerdz dont applie? Uv korse they duu.....

Mine's thee won with thEe elektronik speel chucker inn the frunt poket. Ore maybee tHe reere poket, I fergit.

[C-N]

seconded

It's a masterpiece compared to some of the 419s I've seen

[Anonymous Coward]

^ 9/10.

Only a couple of errors.

[Paul_Murphy]

How could you tell?

It looks legit to me.. though if they know the address then why not just pop over with the loot and if the face-to-face checks are Ok then they leave the money, else they can arrest the person.

I'm sure if someone with a badge and a lorry-load of cash turned up on my doorstep and asked to look at my passport I'd be happy to help.

Seems all this emailing and acquisition of forms is rather superfluous.

ttfn

[Anonymous Coward]

Help me I'm going insane

"Meanwhile we have your full contact address which makes it easier for us to arrest you when ever we want to."

That bit made me smile the most. Although there will be some poor sucker that gets pulled in if they email the whole world with this crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha!

[e-mail]

UFO! Finally confirmed! Conspiracy theorists rejoice!

[envmod]

turtle

i just got arrested by the FBI for money laundering - i left a tenner in one my jeans pockets.

*rimshot*

[Andy Neale]

I had a different one

Mine was from "Mr Edward John (FBI SPECIAL AGENT) " and claimed that someone tried to imposonate me to claim my lottery prize !

Even better, I was to contact a "Mr Sam Bank" in Nigeria to confirm my identity...oh, and send 350 Dollars too...

[Evil Auditor]

Darn!

That's where my money went to! Obviously, something went terribly wrong after I sent my banking details to this nice Nigerian chap a few months ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI will arrest you?

Interesting to see US agencies will arrest folks in Britain. These people have no idea what they're talking about!

Oh, Gary McKinnon...

Best send these guys my bank details and a few thousand pounds to get my hands on the money after all.

[Dave 15]

You forget

Our nice Mr Blair ensured the yanks can arrest people here (via a thinly disguised order to the UK police who will probably beat you to a pulp while they do it) and whisk them off to a nice orange suit without a by your leave.

[DAN*tastik]

they do do stuff like that

Or at least send fbi folks around. Or at least used to

We're talking about 2000 if i'm not wrong, my mum used to work in a nut house in Italy.

One of the guests there kept on sending letters to Clinton, the Queen and so on saying that he was being kept prisoner against his will. They were being sent during his daily supervised walk, since there was no harm in letting him do it.

One day 5 people from the FBI showed up to check if his claim were genuine. US taxpayers must have been happy to fund this sort of investigations.

All the nurses were very glad to receive them anyway cause they were tall, smart and goodlooking.

P.S: the letters didn't contain any coded messages - it was a plain *help, i am sane but locked up at a nut house, that sort of captivity which allows me to send letters like this to the FBI. Find me at the nut house*

[Anonymous Coward]

They do things like that.

They were just saving the taxpayer's money.

If the poor man hadn't been certifiably insane then the whole of the US judicial, law enforcement and diplomatic services would have been mobilized to break a butterfly upon a wheel.

[LinkOfHyrule]

I love this line

I love this line: "Note that we have done a proper investigation".

LMAO If only the real law enforcement agencies would use such wording too, we'd all feel so much safer in the knowledge that the law was being upheld because the investigation was "a proper" one!

[Stoneshop]

What?

No TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE THOUSAND UNITED STATES FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AGENTS (ONLY) at the ready to lift you from your bed in the event of non-compliance?

[Tom 13]

Did Guy forward the message to the FBI?

Surely they will want to know one of their agents has gone rogue.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?

I've been getting these for months. Maybe it's just because I somehow receive a cornucopia of about 50 419 scam mails a day, of all ilks, but it's hardly new.

The funny thing is that I noticed an ad in The Economist - a full page thing in 'tenders' - from a (the?) Nigerian oil company. It almost read like a 419 spam; it had wacky grammar; it was for "oil lifting"; it used random words in CAPITAL letters; it talked about 'modalities'...

I always figured that the 419 spams were just incompetent, but now I'm wondering if ALL business writing in Nigeria is like that - some kind of wacky mashup of out-of-date Queen's English and self-standardized bad grammar. I'm pretty sure that The Economist isn't accepting ads from actual 419ers, and this ad was demanding that applicants do at least $500,000 a month in business, etc... so it was legit. But it READ like a standard 419 spam, just a little bit more professional.

Strange.

[envmod]

actually

all 419 emails are 100% legit. they've got billions in cash to give away, but nobody ever gets back to them.

[Gilleain Torrance]

Like MASSIVE yachts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsYoeoEE3ww

[Anonymous Coward]

No poins for style

A letter really from FBI would be in legalese. 'Fraudulent intent/activity' instead of 'scam', to make just one example.

[Peter Simpson 1]

The FBI doesn't write you an email

they send an army of black-clad, masked and kevlar-ed thugs to bash down your door in the middle of the night. If you're lucky, you might survive the experience.

The letter is all the more humorous for that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay...

Lay of the pills and stop reading trashy novels, please. For all of our sakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta be spam

See all the names of the people this was copied to! (More available in the telephone directory, tell them.)

[Anonymous John]

Re Gotta be spam

I saw one version a while back with North Yorkshire Police in the CC list. Which would have baffled the Heartbeat plod.

[JaitcH]

At least they've moved on from ...

dead uncles and aunts bank accounts or dictators abandoning money.

80% for creativity.

[seanj]

CC: INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF)

Oooh, scary.

Might as well CC Fireman fucking Sam, for all the use they'd be. Too bad they didn't include the FSA and ICO while they were at it, could have given us a real laugh...

[Anonymous Coward]

The title was clever

So clever that I actually set Thunderbird to plain-text and downloaded it just to see what they'd come with this time.

[Lord Lien]

Good old George Agdgdgwngo...

.. is there nothing he will try?

[Maty]

Actually

It would have been a lot scarier if they had cc'd the Inland Revenue. Somehow I can see the boys and gals at the tax office whacking on a 42% capital gains tax, and sending you a bill for 6.43 million with no further questions asked.

Might be cheaper to pay the Nigerian extortionists instead.

[David 45]

Hoot

I'm still laughing. They must think that folk were born yesterday, although who was it that once said there's a sucker born every minute?

[Rattus Rattus]

@ David 45

It was PT Barnum who said there's a sucker born every minute.

On another note, if these chaps should ever happen to be caught, will this not add a charge of attempting to impersonate a federal agent to the list?

[Dale 3]

Follow up

It's a shame he didn't follow up 419-baiters style. I'm curious now how the "FBI" were going to encourage you to start sending money via Western Union.

[Eddy Ito]

No wonder!

I was wondering where all those laptops and guns the FBI lost a few years ago would turn up. Glad to know they haven't lost any more... hang on...

[CmdrX3]

Luckily for them...

...the FBI just happened to have the his email address handy or he would never have known he'd come into a fortune (well after sending the $10,000 payment for the certificate that is).

10.5 million eh? That lucky guy is going to get the entire Nigerian GDP.

There must be some gully bills still sending the cash though for these things to still be going on.

[Bilgepipe]

The US Army are at it, too...

I got one from none other than General Peter Schoomaker [sic] himself:

"Gen. Schoomaker Peter Jan (RET)

Commanding Generals & Chiefs

Chiefs of Staff 1775-2005.

United States

Army Center of Military

My name is General Peter Schoomaker, the former Chief of Army Staff (C.A.S). Actually,I acquired 15.5 Million US Dollarsfrom an oil business I did in Iraq with an Iraqi citizen. I need a good partner who i can trust to assist me in receiving the consignment on my behalf.

All arrangement to bring out the consignment from Iraq have being concluded with a United Nations diplomat. I need someone who can receive it since i can't receive it directly due to my status.

I am offering you 20% of the total sum for your assistance and the 80% will be transferred to my account which I will instruct you in my next email to you on how it will be transferred to my account. Your own part of this deal is to find a safe place where the funds can be sent to.

Your immediate attention to this serious matter is urgently requested and a timely response regarding your plan of action will be appreciated.

Best Regard,

Gen Schoomaker Peter Jan (RET)"

[Mips]

Ambition?

Lagos style.

I cannot wait to get a laptop so I can scam the world.

Erm. How about learning English first.

[Joey]

ATTN:FUND BENEFICIARY,

Might as well have put "To whom it concerns".

[Witty username]

hehehe

ive had this email before, slightly different, they were informing me that the transfer was valid and i should go ahead with it.

ive also had one from Ban Ki Moon himself confirming it.

[Alan Ferris]

My email.....

came frrom a Major Berk, of Nigerian army.

You couldn''t make it up