Internet fraud: most of us have been there.
Only last year did I log into online banking to check my account, which now ressembled an apple with a particularly large bite missing: £4,900 had disappeared, referenced 'To Sammi'.
First of all I wondered what the hell had Sammi had done for me that demanded such bulky remuneration. And then it occurred to me that I didn't actually know anyone called Sammi. Then I swore like a sailor. With Tourette's.
The majority of people whom I informed of this fraud were shocked. Mainly due to the revelation that I had the wherewithall to have somehow saved at least £4,900 over the past six years. But also due to the ease with which the crime was perpetrated. It transpires that the culprits had waltzed into a bank branch in Guildford (a place I rarely frequent) and used a fake drivers licence as I.D. Considering as I don't even have a drivers licence, this is serious salt to the wound. The criminals know where to hit me: my bank balance and my embarassing inability to operate an automobile.
Given the fact that the robbing bastards...sorry, the perpetrators, actually physically visited a branch to carry out the transaction, this may not strictly qualify as internet fraud. However, since I had only joined the world of online banking about a month earlier, it's highly feasible that my account details were gleamed through the process of 'phishing'. Phishing is a technical term, whereby various phelons and phraudsters use information-scavenging emails to phind out more about your credit card details et cetera, and subsequently attempt to phuck your out of your life savings.
Of course there are many other stories, and many other victims. I once read of a English businessman who was undone by a familiar scam: a rich Nigerian family were trying to send money to England but needed some cash (in this case ten thousand pounds) to somehow facilitate the transfer, and they were somehow unable to fund this from their end. As reward, they promise whoever helps them a hefty return on their investment. So, the English businessman sends them the ten grand, and inevitably never hears from them again. It's a familiar tale. However, in this instance, the businessman was so aggrieved that he actually travelled to Nigeria to track down the guilty party. Before you can say 'out of your depth', the business man finds himelf trussed up in a warehouse in the back streets of Nigeria with a gasoline-doused car tyre around his neck (this is a method of torture in which the tyre is ultimately set alight...you can imagine the rest). Fortunately, the authorities managed to intervene before any major harm befell the businessman. However, it goes to show that although the scam emails may be infantile in their grammar and scope, and require a high degree of naivety (or greed) on behalf of the potential dupe to succeed, one thing's for sure: the perpetrators are seriously dangerous and organised individuals. With a LOT of car tyres to spare.
On a lighter note, I remember a time when a good friend bounded up to me in the pub, saying that the drinks for the rest of the night were on him. I asked him the reason behind his new-found benevolence, and he explained that he had just won twenty million euro on the Venezuelan Lottery, and the funny thing was that he didn't even remember buying a ticket! I remained skeptical, but he smugly produced an email from a "Professor Miguel Ignacio Sanchez" as proof. I didn't have the heart to point out that Professor Sanchez had spelt the word 'twenty' wrong in the email title.
But on a final note, I guess what I'm trying to say is, in response to an email I received just this morning from Mahmoud Yayale Ahmed (informing me that my "fund was approvved"): it didn't work when you tried to sell me that crateload of viagra Mahmoud, and it aint gonna work this time.
Be safe,
CB
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