You are saying (gasp) that there's no free lunch??? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Meek" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <Delphi-Talk@elists.org> Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 10:18 AM Subject: To all DT members...a little about Internet, mail,and banking fraud FYI
> I'm making this post because as one of the moderators of the various > Delphi Lists one of my duties is to help screen all the mail that comes into > the servers to be forwarded on to our membership, and deleting all the spam > and OT messages we get bombarded with so that you don't have to. It regards > a situation I got involved in myself as a way of helping international law > enforcement in their fight against the kind of scams I'm about to tell you > of. > About three months ago, I noticed that I had been deleting the same > message over and over from the various lists. It was advertising business > opportunities with a company supposedly in India, and included name, > address, and other basic information, but was delivered through a yahoo > account. > I wrote to this company asking that they remove us from their > mailing list as I normally do when I notice constant abuse from one firm or > another, but I heard nothing back. The mistake I made was sending my > request through my own personal e-mail address, because they obviously added > my name to their "suckers" list as the FBI calls it. > About two weeks ago I received from the same person, an e-mail sent > to my personal address asking if I wanted to participate in their expansion > as they built up representatives for their textile business here in the USA. > And the message went on to say that because their acceptance of any payments > from US companies in return for goods received under wholesale laws, cost > them a 25% tax, they wanted me to act as their go-between and accept these > payments from the companies and then after taking out my commission of 10%, > send the balance directly back to them as an individual. This way they > would only pay a 5% tax on the net amount. > Of course I knew right away that this is a fraudulent scheme, so I > did not answer them but instead contacted the FBI. And because they hadn't > heard through their IC3.gov website of this particular person or company, > they asked me to reply and let them know what happened next. > I did, and I received an e-mail from the same person about four days > ago telling me that I would be receiving a contract from them in short > order, and that I would also be receiving checks from one of their clients > here soon as well. > Yesterday, I received in the mail, a hand-addressed envelope > postmarked from the Republic of Togolaise, which is somewhere in Africa, in > which I found four US travelers checks made out to me, each in the amount of > $1500 US dollars. At the same time I received an e-mail, again from the > same party, telling me that as soon as I received these checks, I should get > them cashed, and then take the $6000 dollars minus my commission of $600 > dollars, and send it to them by Western Union. It went on to say that as > soon as they were in receipt of their money and knew they could trust me, I > would be receiving more checks, and that once I had transferred a total of > $50,000 for them, my commission would go up to 12%. > Finally, the e-mail also included the names, phone numbers, and > addresses of three Western Union offices near me, and as I'm in a rural area > that really amazed me. Also a fairly long diatribe about how this was > perfectly legal and I was taking on no risk as these were Travelers Checks > from my own country and had to be paid for in advance...things like that. > At the FBI's further instructions I took the checks to a large > banking establishment here to be looked at. They passed every form of > counterfeit detection including built-in microdot validation, and so would > have been cashed by almost any bank I had an account with! But upon further > investigation, which included verification of the numbers on the check, it > was found that these numbers were never actually issued by the company that > makes the checks themselves! > Everything is now in the hands of the FBI, Interpol, and as I was > told, the Canadian Mt. Police, but I wanted to bring this to everyone's > attention in hopes that no one would ever consider trying to cash any such > checks they might receive by these circumstances. Had I done so, not only > would I owe the cashing bank $6,000, but could also then have been arrested > for passing counterfeit checks! At the very least the legal hassles would > have been annoying, but knowing the way our law enforcement works, it could > I think get a lot worse! > > from Robert Meek dba Tangentals Design CCopyright 2006 > Proud to be a moderator of "The Delphi Lists" at elists.org > > (["An unused program is the consequence of a higher logic!", nil]) As > written in The Compendium of Accepted Robotic and Surrlogic Theorems Used in > the Self Analysis of Elemental Positronic Pathways...1st Edition Revised > > > > __________________________________________________ > Delphi-Talk mailing list -> Delphi-Talk@elists.org > http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi-talk > __________________________________________________ Delphi-Talk mailing list -> Delphi-Talk@elists.org http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi-talk
