How To Handle Emails About Transferring Money Out Of Africa When Concerned With Virtual World Scams

How should I handle emails about transferring money out of Africa?

If you receive an email that's asking you to help get money out of an African nation, that's a variation of what's known as the Nigerian letter scam. And, basically, it is just that, it is a scam. And though the scam is set up so that you will be receiving money, at the end of the day, you will actually be spending money. It is surprising the number of people that have been taken by this, highly educated people who have been taken by this, and the great sums of money that are lost to these types of scams. I collect Nigerian letter scams, meaning the communication that is sent to me, and very often I will try to engage these people in a discourse or some kind of communication so I can learn more about how it works. Obviously, I don't send money so we never get very far but we get through the, sort of, trust factor. A couple of things that they do which are very interesting is they'll pick comething out of the news that's very current and news worthy such as an African leader who has been slain. They will copy the URL to this legitimate newspaper, this legitimate story and claim that they represent the estate of this slain person or this family. You get caught up in the moment of it. It seems to kind of check out at first bcause here's a real story of something that happened. And here is a barrister or someone that's contacted you and it just seems like a great opportunity. One of the tell tale signs are these foreign ministers and bank representatives and estate representatives somehow only have Yahoo and gmail accounts.