Got this in my email this morning...looks like some kind of con job...has anyone else been getting this sort of thing? What can I do about this since it must be illegal? Dear Driver, I am barrister William Adebayo a solicitor at law. I am the personal attorney to Mr.Mark Driver a national of your country,who used to work with shell development company in Nigeria. Here in after shall be referred to as my client. On the 21st of April 1998, my client, his wife And their two children were involved in a car accident along sagbama express road. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost there lives. Since then I have made several enquiries to your embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives this has also proved unsuccessful. After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to track his last name over the Internet, so as to present you as the next of kin. Hence i decided ot contact you.My client left a lot of money in banks here as well as bought many other valuable properties worth millions of dollars.I have contacted you to repartrate his money and property before they get confisicated or the bank accounts declared unserviceable. I have all documents to this deposit and property all I require is your assistance to acquire the huge deposits left behind as the bank has notified me to provide a next of kin before the next ten official working days or forfeit the money Your soonest response is anticipated. Best regards, William Adebayo.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12359&Form.ShowMessage=585574

It is a con job. Some days ago we had a thread about such emails in the tavern.

nope havnt recieved anything like it lately i did before the sept 11 attacks though,it was from some person who wanted to put money into my bank account i just deleted it

Oh yeah... I get 'em all the time. The only thing that changes is the subject matter, but the idea is always the same.

No real Attorney would make contact with you first over the Internet. You would get a registered letter in the mail. It's a scam! Next He'll want your SS# and mother's maiden name. So he can claim the inheritance for you. What will really happen is he'll use the info to get a credit card in your name.

Here is a pretty cool article on this subject.

Well, one clue this is a total scam is that the person is not terribly good at typing and has not paid enough attention to his grammer, etc. Attorney's are incredibly careful there generally.

Don't fall for it. It's a variation on "I've won a lottery, but I'm here illegally, so if you give me $2,000 to show good faith, I'll let you cash the ticket and split $2 million." No attorney would contact you through the Internet, and no attorney would just pull a name out of a hat to give a dead client's money to -- he would file the forms to put it into a trust fund until the rightful heir was found. Please don't respond to that e-mail. You will be robbed blind. Unfortunately, you probably can't do anything to stop these bozos because they all use anonymous re-mailers (courtesy of the couple of dozen techno-jerks who hide behind the First Amendment while helping con artists rip off people).

Thanks for the replies...I knew it was a con from the getgo. First tip off...was use of the term "solicitor at law" as opposed to "attorney at law". Am I to believe that solicitors now have to have a batchelor's degree in lawschool? Aside from improper grammar (Shell Corporation should be capitalized)...there's something unusual about the death occuring in 1998...and now there is only ten days left before the money gets confiscated (by whom?). Certainly, it didn't take five years to track down someone with the name of Driver on the internet.

(By whom?) The bank! If an account is left unchecked for four years. (Nobody makes a deposit, withdrawal, checks the balance or has the interest added) A bank can have the account declared dead and they can take the money. I think that law was past about ten years ago.

eric....... gee..... I guess we can forget "the party" plan ? oh well........ :(

I have received a few obviously con trick emails, always about Nigeria. Why always Nigeria? I flushed it straight down the /dev/null .

This puppy and the "Nigerian diplomat trying to get money out of the country" scam do the rounds about once a year where I live...and the scary thing is that people actually do reply and give out bank account details and such to the people on the other end...I guess greed knows no bounds, has no brains and definitely no common sense.

Had quite a few of them in the last year - especially a Nigerian diplomat or something! - I emailed a couple of them back with polite words involving directions of digits and certain anatomical regions, and they just bounced back from the ISP.

Attached Link: http://scambusters.com/

Yep, sounds like a new variation on the Nigeria scam, Like Kromekat's talking about, shows up on e-mails, fax machines, etc. every so often. I've included the url to a great site for information about a lot of these. AND if you go through the "Urban Legends" area you find some other familiar e-mails like the "tracking software" where they want you to forward the message to so many people and in xx period of time you'll receive a check from _______ (intel, microsoft, fill in the blank) for helping them test their software.

Attached Link: http://scambusters.com/NigerianFee.html

Actually If I had thought faster I could have been more specific. And Edriver, there's even info at the bottom about forwarding what you received to the Secret Service, they'd probably be interested in the new variation. And just a quick cut and paste note for those that don't bother to follow the link, the clowns running these scams can be down right dangerous to those that fall for them: "In June of 1995, an American was murdered in Lagos, Nigeria, while pursuing a 4-1-9 scam, and numerous other foreign nationals have been reported as missing. Recommendation: Avoid these scams like the plague! Don't let promises of large amounts of money impair your judgment."

It could'nt have hurt to reply to him...Did you? What'd he say? }8^ O)

We had gotten an airmail letter from "nigeria" a few years ago about the poor dead Oba and his son needing to get the money out of the country. What was odd was they had to have used the phone book locally to have addressed the letter in the manner they had ( without town ). We got a real kick out of it and had planned to write a book about a series of people who recieved these letters and what they did and how it turned out. Then we found out that it was really about identity thieft and it wasn't so funny anymore.

With me, "Nigeria" means "bin it". Likely real Nigerians and real Nigerian business interests don't like their name baing dirtied like this. I wouldn't like to be a real Nigerian business trying to make business contacts.