Nigerian Workshop: How to defraud an iPhone with fake Citibank emails
Story byToivo Tänavsuu
Journalist and blogger Toivo Tänavsuu is from Estonia and just released his new business, IT and innovations weblog about “enterprises, roar(show all)Journalist and blogger Toivo Tänavsuu is from Estonia and just released his new business, IT and innovations weblog about “enterprises, roaring like tigers”,TigerPrises.com. He shares some of his best stories on The Next Web.
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Juliet Malcos from Liverpool wants my iPhone
I had just put my iPhone for sale in local Estonian commercial announcements websiteSoov.ee, when I received a surprising purchase request via Gmail. Apparently from a lady named Juliet Malcos, according to her Yahoo e-mail address. She was claiming to live in Liverpool, UK (that’s 3000 kilometers from where I live) and she was interested in “immediate purchase” of my item. Her desperate cry for my abandoned iPhone was so loud, that she offered me 600 euros for the piece (175 euro more than I wanted at first place), plus recoup of the shipment costs.
We exchanged several e-mails. But here’s the funniest part: She said the phone was needed for her daughter’s school project. Her daughter was about to leave from Heathrow airport to Nigeria for this project.
So I had to hurry up. “The British lady” asked for my account number, but more importantly, she asked me to send the phone viaDHLor FedEx over to address “Temitope Johnson, 1 Balogun Street, Mokola, Ibadan city, Oyo State, 23402 Nigeria”, while she would “rush” into her bank for money transaction.
Confirmations from Citibank
The next day an email pops into my Gmail-box, letter with some copy-paste logos from CitiBank:
Tell?
So what she wanted me to do was to send my iPhone over to Nigeria. Only after I have made the shipment and sent the shipment verification number to the so-called Citibank, they would be able to complete the transfer of my 600 euros. But we all know that the abbreviation for word “telephone” is not “tell”, but “tel”..
Anyway, only few hours later I received another e-mail from “CitiBank Service” saying the payment of Mrs. Malcos had been processed successfully and that it could take 24 to 72 hours till my bank would confirm this. That is, whenever the shipment was verified.
Some people actually fall for it
Well, eventually I had to disappoint my “Nigerian pal” Juliet. Didn’t send the phone to Africa. I guess there’s no need to say that I saw no 600 euros in my account either. She underestimated me big time!
People, please warn your naive friends about this! Some offers are too good to be true. And I am not the only one targeted with breath-taking offers “from UK”.
Estonian dailyEesti Päevalehtpublisheda storyabout an Estonian, how he was selling his smartphone, just as I did sell mine. Apparently “Mary Jones“ from UK contacted him and wanted to purchase the piece for her friend who lives in Nigeria.
DHL wants you to think twice
The exact same story: just send the piece over to Nigeria please, via DHL and you will have 500 wasy euros in your account! Confirmation e-mails from “CitiBank Service” and everything. The guy was also lucky, because he saw this through as well. But played along for a while.
But unfortunately some of us, Estonians, haven’t been that fortunate. I was speaking with DHL Estonian representatives and they told me that one other guy fell for the scam. He sent his laptop over to Nigeria, believing all these nice promises coming from UK. The fraudulent pilgrimage of his laptop was stopped by DHL in Nigeria, but poor guy had to pay several hundred dollars for the shipment forth and back, before the item was returned to him.
So from now on, every time somebody wants to send something from Estonia over to Nigeria, DHL asks to double-think. They say from their wide experience that Nigerian con men are also pretty active in environments likeeBay.
Where things stand between me and Juliet iss hard to tell, because the situations is bizarre. She is still writing me e-mails asking for the shipment receipt.
