"Lady Mercy Udo" Nigerian 419

Hello;

I have a family member who has been in contact with a "Lady Mercy Udo" who is a Computer Scientist from the "CBN Central Bank of Nigeria". He has recently sent money to this person to get 8.5 million from an inheritance wire transfered. I had the feeling something was wrong, so I did a Scroogle search and the name came up with a link to this very page. This led me to begin reading info here and on other sites where I learned about this type of 419 scam.

The money was supposed to be transferred yesterday, then he received a new e-mail from a "Dr. Kelvin Moses" supposedly from "Offshore Payment Center of London" saying to pay another $8,500 for the funds to be transferred. I searched him, and the 1st 12 listings came up as sites detailing Nigerian frauds. On one of those sites, I found info regarding phone numbers, and the prefix he gave was "4470", which is Nigeria, not London. This site also said that these scammers are related to the Nigerian political elite.

http://www.joewein.de/sw/419-phone-uk.htm#phone-uk

This is my 1st exposure to this type of thing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thx.

P.S. The nice folks at 419eater.com refereed me to check in here. Will be reading up.

Hi Kelldor and welcome to Scamwarners.


The most important thing for your friend is to realise that any money sent is now lost forever, scammers will often try recovery scams which promise to retrieve the lost money but invariably require fees to be paid, just like the inheritance, your friend will never again see any money he sends

The best course of action is to cease all communication with the scammers and eventually they will go away, unfortunately in most cases only to come back as another person and try to steal more money.

The next thing is to get a new email address and change any bank account details that were supplied to the scammers.

After that, read up and learn, you obviously know at least a little about doing searches which is great, teach your friend as well and encourage him to do some searches for himself.

You should explain that there is no inheritance, lottery win or any other money coming to him from strangers on the internet, it simply does not happen in real life, all of these offers are simply more scams.

If you could get more details and post them here will may well prevent another person from becoming a victim of these scammers, email addresses, phone numbers, company names and any other details will be helpful as well as any early emails, the more details you provide, the easier it is for a potential victim to find your information.

I am sorry that money was lost and it is little comfort but it could have been much worse, we know of cases where victims have lost everything including their lives to internet scammers.

If you would like to bait them then that is great as well, any time you can have a scammer waste is time they will not be spending on a real potential victim and to make it even better, baiting can be loads of fun.

I am not sure how much more information I can give right now but if you have any specific questions then please feel free to ask

Welcome, Kelidor & thank you for sharing the information. It is sad that your family member has lost money to these scammers - & it is a classic NOK (Next-of-Kin) scam.

Was the email address of CBN a yahoo, gmail or hotmail address? These are free webmail services & are NEVER used by legitimate banks. Any number starting +44 70x is a 'redirect anywhere' number which, as you say, is not a UK number. Other numbers they give could well be for a mobile, which are never used by banks to do legitimate business.

Any emails you have that you can post here will assist in preventing others from possibly falling for the scam, as search engines soon find this site should someone look for details.

Welcome Kelldor, I'm glad you found your way here. I'm sorry to hear that your family member was the victim of a scam. Unfortunately, any money they have paid is gone, and there is almost no chance that the scammers will ever be caught. Please warn your family member about follow up scams. Here's an overview of them in a post I made a while back: Click.

Thx for the replies folks.

Unfortunately my family still believes in this and if I push it, they get loud and close to being violent, so I have to let it rest for now... until tomorrow. The family member in question I think understand that the 2 people in recent contact are scammers, but still believes that there is some next of kin money. I am unable to convince the 1 family member dealing with this, or the rest of the family, that the entire thing is a fraud. They refuse to give me the name of the supposed international corporate attorney in London that they are dealing with, I think, because if I proved he too was a scammer that it would be too much for their brains to handle. I see them all throwing up mental blocks. The psychological damage once the truth is realized may drive 1 or more over the edge. I will give it 1 more day before I take action. I'm not being allowed any access to the e-mails, documents, passport photos, etc.

I'll keep you posted, and do what I can to gather info and post it here once this is resolved and calmed down. Any info on how to convince them in such a way as to not illicit violent reactions would be appreciated. Thank you again.

Kelldor, when the sound and the fury have died down a little bit, would it help to show someone in the family a series of emails from other people all claiming to be computer scientists at the CBN - and all worded almost exactly the same? If you do a Google search on "computer scientist Central Bank of Nigeria" you'll get quite a few.

They all say they've come across a disk painted red and marked with an "X" that contains information about money you supposedly are due to receive. I wonder if that would sound familiar to your family member. Perhaps if the family member saw that lots of people receive the same message if he/she would be more ready to believe that it's a scam.

It is so hard to know someone close to you is being defrauded and you can't seem to do anything about it.

Without knowing the person I couldn't begin to tell you the best way, but when you next to talk to them, make sure there is a safe escape route.

Hopefully, the message will have got through and over the next few days it will sink in. Pride is a very hard thing to swallow. Do not keep nagging them, this will just cause them to block you out and build up walls. Do try to convince them to not send any more money for now.

If you can not convince them, that it's a scam, or even that they should come on here or do some research, then your best bet is (and I know this sounds horrible) to get a law enforcement official involved. Get them to have a quiet word and hopefully that will help.

Unfortunately, there is no crisis helpline or specialised head shrinks for advance fee fraud. You may consider someone with a history in gambling addiction.

thank you all very much for the advice. I will let things calm down, wait til this next new deadline passes tomorrow, and then I will try 1 more time to talk some sense into them. My relative has stated that he sent information to the FBI today, but he just thinks the 2 recent individuals are trying to scam him of the money, he still thinks the money is real and that he has some attorney in UK, and on and on. If I get no where tomorrow, I will have no choice but to report this to the authorities as now the way I see it, I am a witness to a crime, so it is my duty. I'm no fan of the feds by any stretch, but I'm not left with much choice. I see this thing tearing my family apart and 2 bucks says that if I call the feds, I will be blamed for us not getting the money, and ostracized.

Kel

"Evil prevails when good men do nothing" - Edmund Burke

The quote in your post is an apt one.

Any pain you go through during the fallout from this is going to be much less than if it carried on unchecked.

It's more important to me, that I can look myself in the mirror. I do care if my friends or family don't want to spend time with me, but at least I can still bear to be in my own company.

Whilst it is quite a harsh comment, I will still make it and hope you don't take offence. If your family can't or won't see that you are doing your best to help them - all a person can really do in any situation - then they don't deserve your company.

I hope that this works out well for you and your family. Please keep us updated, we will help in any way we can.

Kel,

Your recent post changes things a bit from my perspective, i cant do it now as i am at work but later tonight i will see what I can dig up, if I do find some proof and with your approval i can send some information to your relative and hopefully make them believe what you have said all along.

Do try to convince any family members who will listen as it is very common for scam victims to borrow money from family and friends, one recent case much the same as yours a family friend lent the victim $120,000, there is no way this money will ever be payed back and as a result an elderly woman who doesn't even use computers is about to lose her home

If I do find anything to offer as proof I will post it here and leave it to you to decide if you would like us to contact them

Kel, I have some good news for you I think,

A quick search has found an example of your relatives scammer which is included in This Link

Does this look familiar

Dear sir/madam i am miss mercy udo a computer scientist with central bank of nigeria . i am 26 years old, just started work with cbn i came across your file ...

As I mentioned earlier, we can contact your relatives and give them a warning to try to convince them, now that we can offer some examples of the same scammer in action we may be able to get through.

I will do a few more checks to update this post and provide some information that may help.

Here is one of the email addresses used [email protected] a search on that email address leads me to This result taking a closer look at the results I found this post

I am Miss Mercy Udo a computer scientist with central bank of Nigeria.
I am 26 years old, just started work with C.B.N. I came across your
file which was marked X and your released disk painted RED, I took
time to study it and found out that you have paid VIRTUALLY all fees
and certificate but the fund has not been release to you. The most
annoying thing is that they cannot tell you the truths that on no
account will they ever release the fund to you; instead they let you
spend money unnecessarily. I do not intend to work here all the days
of my life, I can release this fund to you if you can certify me of my
security, and how I can run away from this Nigeria if I do this,
because if I don’t run away from this country after i made the
transfer, I will be seriously in trouble and my life will be in
danger.

Please you may not understand it because you are not a Nigerian. The
only thing I will need to release this fund is a special HARD DISK we
call it HD120 GIG. I will buy two of it, recopy your information,
destroy the previous one, and punch the computer to reflect in your
bank within 24 banking hours. I will clean up the tracer and destroy
your file, after which I will run away from Nigeria to meet with you.
If you are interested,

Do get in touch with me immediately on my
E-MAIL:[email protected]
PHONE:+234-1-432-1930

You should send to me your convenient tell/fax numbers for easy
communications and also re confirm your banking details, so that there
won’t be any mistake.

Regards,

Miss Mercy Udo.
Computer Scientist.

You will notice it includes a phone number which I also searched on which led me to another example of the same email

I then tried a very relevant part of the email, this part ( HARD DISK we call it HD120 GIG ) so I did a search on that which led me to other examples of other people who are using the same excuse to scam others, you can see them in this post Click Here

As you can see the proof is there and using this information we can provide others proof that it is a scam.

It is your choice how you handle this but it may be best for you to keep out of it for the moment and let one of our experienced warners use the information that is freely available to prove it to your relative.

If you would like us to do it, PM a phone number or email address to me and I will make sure the most appropriate warner gets in touch with your relative