I have been requested by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company has recently concluded a large number of contracts for oil exploration in the sub-Sahara region. The contracts have immediately produced moneys equaling US$40,000,000. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company is desirous of oil exploration in other parts of the world, however, because of certain regulations of the Nigerian Government, it is unable to move these funds to another region.
You assistance is requested as a non-Nigerian citizen to assist the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, and also the Central Bank of Nigeria, in moving these funds out of Nigeria. If the funds can be transferred to your name, in your United States account, then you can forward the funds as directed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company. In exchange for your accommodating services, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company would agree to allow you to retain 10%, or US$4 million of this amount.
However, to be a legitimate transferee of these moneys according to Nigerian law, you must presently be a depositor of at least US$100,000 in a Nigerian bank which is regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
If it will be possible for you to assist us, we would be most grateful. We suggest that you meet with us in person in Lagos, and that during your visit I introduce you to the representatives of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, as well as with certain officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Please call me at your earliest convenience at 18-467-4975. Time is of the essence in this matter; very quickly the Nigerian Government will realize that the Central Bank is maintaining this amount on deposit, and attempt to levy certain depository taxes on it.
I know more than one English teacher that absolutely hate the fact that the current "Nigerian" e-mails in order to skip past spam detectors have better grammar than some of their students.
Its fairly well documented that "Nigerian scammer emails" deliberately use poor grammar so as to filter out people in the smarter end of the target pool, since those people will never fall for their story and will just waste the scammer's time.
Which makes your English teacher's chagrin even more justified.
I don't know, some of the stuff we are getting (that is taking a massive pain in the butt time to filter) is written well. I get the feeling that bad grammar was true early on, but some of this stuff is damn near art.
Online versions of the scam originate primarily in the United States, the United Kingdom and Nigeria, with Ivory Coast, Togo, South Africa, Benin, the Netherlands, and Spain also having high incidences of such fraud
I suggest the parent takes some time, do a little study and call a criminal act what it is, rather than lazily labelling 200m people as scammers.
On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to concerns about insulting a large group of people. On the other, "Nigerian scam" is an extremely common way to refer to this, and is more specific than "advance-fee scam" which covers a class of similar scams. I don't think the name "Nigerian scam" is good but it is the name many people know.
Also, there's no citation for the "primarily in the United States, the United Kingdom and Nigeria..." claim. The reference to Encyclopedia Britannica is dead and presumably was for the "419" name since that's the sentence it's actually on.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting or whom you are addressing.
AFAIK, the reason the country of Nigeria is frequently associated with advance fee scam probably has more to do with a particularly famous example of a scam phishing email, where the email writer claims to be a Nigerian prince cut off from his substantial family fortune due to political issues of some kind.
I have been requested by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company has recently concluded a large number of contracts for oil exploration in the sub-Sahara region. The contracts have immediately produced moneys equaling US$40,000,000. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company is desirous of oil exploration in other parts of the world, however, because of certain regulations of the Nigerian Government, it is unable to move these funds to another region.
You assistance is requested as a non-Nigerian citizen to assist the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, and also the Central Bank of Nigeria, in moving these funds out of Nigeria. If the funds can be transferred to your name, in your United States account, then you can forward the funds as directed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company. In exchange for your accommodating services, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company would agree to allow you to retain 10%, or US$4 million of this amount.
However, to be a legitimate transferee of these moneys according to Nigerian law, you must presently be a depositor of at least US$100,000 in a Nigerian bank which is regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
If it will be possible for you to assist us, we would be most grateful. We suggest that you meet with us in person in Lagos, and that during your visit I introduce you to the representatives of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, as well as with certain officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Please call me at your earliest convenience at 18-467-4975. Time is of the essence in this matter; very quickly the Nigerian Government will realize that the Central Bank is maintaining this amount on deposit, and attempt to levy certain depository taxes on it.
Yours truly,
Prince Alyusi Islassis