Joel Sax Sounds Korean, doesn’t it?

Posted on August 12, 2004 in Mailbox Scoundrels

It seems that the Nigerian email scam has moved to Germany and Korea! Or at least a variation on it which capitalizes on the potential for a windfall profit. The phone number given here has a Nigerian dialing prefix (Highlights mine):

Date sent: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:17:33 +0200

From: ecobank.nig-plc@epost.de

Subject: we can


ATTN:Sir/Ma,

My name is Mr KC UGO the Manager, Credit and Foreign
bills of Eco Bank Plc.

I am writing in respect of a foreign customer of my
bank with account number
14-255-2004/utb/t whose name is Chung Timothy who
perished in a plane crash
[Korean Air Flight 801] with the whole passengers
aboard on August 6,1997.And
for your perusal you can view this website
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9708/06/guam.passenger.list/
Since the demise of this our customer, I personally
has watched with keen
interest to see the next of kin but all has proved
abortive as no one has
come to claim his funds of US$15M (Ffifteen Million
United States Dollars)which
has been with my branch for a very long time.

On this note, I decided to seek for whom his name
shall be used as the Next
of Kin as no one has come up to be the next of kin.
And the banking ethics
here does not allow such money to stay more than eight
years, because money
will be recalled to the bank treasury as unclaimed
after this period.

In view of this I got your contact through a trade
journal after realizing that your name and country is similar to the
deceased.

I will give you 30% of the total. Upon the receipt of
your response, I will
send you by fax or e-mail the application, bank’s fax
number and the next
step to take.

I will not fail to bring to your notice that this
business is hitch free
and that you should not entertain any fear as all
modalities for fund transfer
can be finalized within five banking days, after you
apply to the bank as
a relation to the deceased.

When you receive this letter. Kindly send me an e-mail
signifying your decision
including your private Tel/Fax numbers for quick
communication.Please call
me on my direct phone number Tel: 234-80554 62 636 for
more clearification.Email:morrsi1974@hotmail.com

Yours Sincerely,

Mr KC UGO

I know the psychology being employed here: “We’ll pretend that we’re so dumb that Mr. Sax will want to take advantage of us.” There’s plenty of misdirection in this little opus, pointing everywhere except — almost — to the actual country of origin.

According to the 419 Coalition, email fraud is the fifth to third largest business in Nigeria. The scam has been around since the 1920s, when it originated as the “Spanish Prisoner Con” — a clever scheme whereby people were asked to help smuggle some unhappy fascist out of prison. Today, it involves some kind of money laundering or counterfeit check scheme as one New York couple discovered this past July:

The man sent a check to pay for the bike and the shipping. The catch — Brown had to send
some of that money back to pay the shipping charge.


“He sent us a check for $4,500, and we sent $1,800 back to him. A week later, the check came back counterfeit.”

It astounds me that people still get taken, even when the source is obviously Nigeria. (Why didn’t Brown wait for the check to clear?) It took me all of a minute to verify that this originated out of Nigeria. But then, I’ve been seeing these emails since the late 1980s and, undoubtably, they go back even farther. The United States Secret Service handles this kind of fraud: If you get this kind of mail and live in the United States, send it to the U.S. Secret Service at 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov. For information about who to contact elsewhere, see the 419 Coalition webpage.

As for my “friend” who thinks that Joel Sax sounds like a Korean name: You go to hell, Mr. UGO.