SGT JAMES SMITH IS A SCAMMER.. [email protected]

He called himself sgt James Smith, he say's he's currently in Nigeria, I have sent him more than $2000 via western union money transfer, he asked me to apply for his leave, i did and i paid for ticket, he later asked me to pay for some money to claim his benefits, I know he's still scamming other innocent ladies out there, Please beware, here are the info i sent money to in Nigeria .

Nosiru Ismail Adeola
Abeokuta
Nigeria.

I am working with the local police and with the western union to track him down.

Welcome DB,

I am sorry that you were scammed.

I just want to reiterate that the person who was writing you is not the man in the photos. In reality, he is not American, and he is not a soldier. He is a young Nigerian man who simply stole photos of a random soldier from the internet. At no point were you in contact with any branch of the US military. Any contact information you were given is fake. I imagine you have discovered now that in the US (or UK) military, you will never apply for a soldier's leave, and there are no fees for leave either.

While it is possible that the police in your country will have an arrangement with the Nigerian authorities that give them a better chance, in reality the odds are still nearly zero that the police will track down your scammer unless they have significant information from related cases. The scammer will actually be located in Nigeria, and your local police do not have jurisdiction there. As far as Western Union goes--the money will have been picked up at any of thousands of WU agents in Nigeria. The vast majority of these agents do not have security cameras. If a test question and answer was used, the agents do not need to check ID (and even if they did, many scammers will go to the trouble of creating or buying a fake ID.) In addition, many scammers there have arrangements with corrupt agents, who will pass the money to them and conceal their real identity for a portion of the profit.

The reason I want to make this clear is because this kind of scammer often moves to a recovery scam. He will contact you, posing as the authorities, claiming that the scammer has been located and/or arrested. Ultimately, this approach is actually nothing more than a lead-in to another scam. It is important to know this and be prepared for this possibility.

On another note--if your username is your real name, I recommend changing it to protect your privacy. Just give me a new name and I can change it for you.

If you could, please post the emails around the "leave request" as well, as these can help others to avoid being scammed.