According to the Malay Mail, a “US-based Korean” went to Malaysia to meet his African Internet Sweetheart who he had helped by sending her money. Not surprising, the young woman did not show. Obviously not the smartest in his class, the unidentified Korean sent $60,000 USD to a bank in Malaysia so that she could use it to secure her inheritance. The chief of police characterized the Korean as a “gullible victim.”
A couple of years ago I received an email supposedly from a North Korean defector living in Korea who was less than satisfied with his life here – he supposedly had access to North Korean funds and wanted help moving the money (I assume it was still in North Korea or perhaps China) to another country – not South Korea. Of course, he needed someone he could trust and somehow I qualified….all I needed to do was send him my information and then together we could both profit from our venture. Unfortunately, I erased the email (but here is another one - see example 10).
It appears that these scammers – most said to reside in Africa – keep well abreast of the news as evidenced by this example.
“From Sgt Herman HansleyCamp MXP-512 Third Infantry DivisionUnitT.I.D.U,Abul Uruj, Baghdad, Iraq. I am Herman R Hansley, a native of Iraq. I am a Military Contractor with the America troop currently serving in the third infantry division Unit in Iraq. I am currently on duty break. My partner Darren D. Braswell,36, of Riverdale, Ga., died Jan. 7th near TalAfar, Iraq, when the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter in which he was a Passenger crashed. Braswell worked For the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, before his death We secretly moved some abandoned cash in a mansion belonging to the former president, Saddam Hussein and the total cash is US$20,200,000.00 Twenty Million two hundred thousand Dollars. As I write this letter to you, these boxes are in Security Company as I secretly moved it out of Baghdad to safe place. Sir I seek your consent to help me move this money to your country location. You do not have to be afraid of anything as no one else knows about this and everything is safe. I would be pleased and grateful to you if you could assist me and my late partner Darren D. Braswel in receiving this boxes for us on your behalf as I will be heading back soon to camp in Iraq to join my colleagues. Of course, I shall compensate you with an attractive percent of the total funds for your role/efforts. We have limited time now as you know that our evacuation agreement is been negotiated by the USA and IRAQI government, kindly get back to me immediately. Moving the funds out of the security company is not going to be much of a problem as arrangements are being made towards that. All I want is your trust.”
You have got to love that last part. I suppose I could have just added the link to Korean Drama Group which has an interesting look on this piece but you know the old saying….misery loves company…and why should I have been the only one to have read it?
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A number of years ago I got an email from one of those scammers that read:
Dear______
I am Dim Wae Hee brother of former Korean President Park Chung Hee…
nearly fell out of my chair laughing
The worst are the telemarketers that steal money from the elderly. If I ever develop an incurable brain tumor I’m going to go postal on all those fuckers in Lolo, Montana.
Don’t get angry. Get even. Become a scam-baiter.
Get yourself a trophy and display it in the trophy room: http://forum.419eater.com/forum/album.php
Or, get your scammer killed and try to outdo this piece of genius:
http://www.419eater.com/html/RoadToChadDarfur/index.html
i like how they give you the amount down to cents, like 20 million, 200 thousand and 50 cents, instead of 0, would somehow sway me.
btw, if they ever catch any of these cats, they gotta string em up…
I feel sorry for that guy, but how can such a dim-witted gullible guy have that much in cash ready to send overseas? It’s not easy to send $60,000 overseas. He’s probably rich and dumb.
Alright JW, fess up… it was you, huh?
Sorry, I’m running a bit low on money these days. Goddamn wall street bankers.
Nice comeback!
Here are your balls back…
No offense 형님. Just couldn’t resist.
Maybe this has been going on across Korea for awhile, but at my regional bank, they recently added a step to transfer money via ATM. You now must read a disclaimer about phone scammers, and verify that you are not transferring funds because of a recent phone call. There’s also a poster about it with a funny cartoon of a ditzy housewife.
One of my Korean coworkers just got duped out of thousands a few weeks back. She was on MSN Messenger when a conversation bubble from her brother pops up. He says he needs a lot of money for an emergency. She has no reason to think that it’s not her brother since she has chatted with him many times over the years. He gives her his bank info right there and she hurries to send the cash to him. She thought he was in some kind of trouble. Of course, it’s not her brother, something she found out the next day on the phone with him. The cops said that they couldn’t trace it as it was a pretty elaborate scam and the bank account led nowhere. Perhaps her brother left his name and ID on at a PC Bang or something, or the guys just hacked into his account. She looked terrible for the next few weeks, naturally.
I got an email a few months back claiming to be from the widow of late Daewoo Corp founder Kim Woo-chung, now hiding-out in Hong Kong with her cash-stash she needed to send to me. “She” offered her name as “Maria Woo-Chung” — the scammers thought Woo-Chung is the family name there!!! and that his widow might be named Maria!! I laughed right out-loud, for a coupla minutes…
These scammers couldn’t even be bothered to do THAT much little prior-homework…
Abiola chop your dollar.
When I was working at Hong Kong, a scammer pretended that he was an executive of a Hong Kong-based bank — which was located in the same building I was working in! (The scammer gave the correct mailing address and everything.) I immediately offered that since I work in the same building and was VERY interested in the transaction, I will come upstairs right now. Unfortunately, radio silence.
The advance fee fraud AKA 419 scam has been around for years. I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone dumb enough to fall for it. in fact I find it rather amusing that some people are such suckers.
Every year there is some “case” that finds its way to my law firm where an associate will have been inveigled by some foolish “client” to investigate one of these idiotic offers. They never want to believe it’s an obvious fraud.
I regularly get these emails. I think someone in Nigeria has the Amcham book.
I know of someone in Seoul who got done for US$12m. The genius part, and the bit which appeals in Korea, is the whiff of illegality.
trebor,
It’s not just Korea, it’s everywhere, which is why we have the old expression “You can’t con an honest man.”
And it’s why con artists don’t feel bad for the people they sucker. The victims are just people who got screwed over while in the process of trying to screw over someone else.
Except for those old ladies who get conned over the phone. That’s just sick.
I was getting some nice snail mails with cool South African tropical fish stamps on them mailed to what was clearly my AmCham address. Too bad I gave up stamp collecting at the age of ten. And then there’s Hadji selling rugs by phone from East Crapistan. Those folks at AmCham will sell the directory to anyone.
$12 million! I would love to hear that story.
AMCHAM will sell the book to any monkey, but they will under no circumstances lift a finger to bring their e-mail communications into the present day.
No sir, members get a Microsoft Word attachment, a GIF or JPG, e-mailed to us by a “Send All” to the Outlook address book, and senders have to pay AMCHAM by the page (!), without reference to file size (a 120KB 16-page PDF costs W6,400,000, while a 1MB JPG costs W400,000) for the privilege. No list segmentation, no statistical collection such as how many recipients actually opened the thing, nothing.
This despite the fact that pretty regularly over the last five (!) years I’ve patiently suggested workable commercial alternatives like CampaignMonitor, ConstantContact, MailChimp, Emma, etc. I’ve suggested these things because I’d like to use the AMCHAM mailing list, and would be willing to pay more if there were tools to improve effectiveness. It’s as if the AMCHAM management is willfully stupid or something.
I guess that’s pretty frustrating when you consider all those monkeys you could have as client prospects.
I’ve been pretty lucky in that I have enough good clients to not have to take in the monkeys to make a living. It’s really liberating to be able to tell the real idiots to hit the bricks. I find telling fools to move along to be pretty liberating. Once or twice a year I have the pleasure to tell some real jerk to go to hell.
Usually, in my experience, the worst fools are the Korean country managers of smaller foreign investors, which country managers are completely full of themselves and abusive to outside service providers chosen by their shareholders. Just because you’re sajang-nim of some small company doesn’t mean you get to treat my associates like shit. It’s too bad that foreign investors fall for any Korean guy who says he “knows all the right people”, speaks English, and has a firm handshake. So many of those guys are straight-up grifters.
Still, it would be nice if AMCHAM would help us communicate with the not-fools.
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