After a Decade, 77-Year-Old Gets Back $110,000 Lost In 'Nigerian Prince' Scam (kansascity.com) 128
Slashdot reader grep -v '.*' * shares a surprising story. The Kansas City Star profiles the victim of a three-year con that started with an email to a Yahoo inbox back in 2005.
A decade ago, Fred Haines was wandering the Wichita airport looking for a Nigerian man hauling two chests full of cash. After an hour of waiting and asking around, he finally came to the realization that the $65 million Nigerian fortune he thought he was inheriting was not coming after all. What is now coming, though, is the $110,000 he had been scammed out of, thanks to the work of the Kansas Attorney General's Office.
From 2005 to 2008, swindlers hoodwinked Haines, a self-employed handyman in Wichita, into spending thousands in pursuit of an imaginary inheritance from a Nigerian government official -- a con known as the Nigerian Prince Scam. Haines re-mortgaged his house three times in the process. Last year, in a settlement with the Department of Justice, Western Union admitted it knew some of its employees had conspired with scam artists to bilk people out of money and had failed to fix the problem. The company set aside $586 million to create a fund to refund victims across the U.S. and Canada... All victims who'd sent money to hucksters using the service were able to request refunds, but only those who had complained to law enforcement or Western Union were notified directly of the settlement.
"It got to the point where they were showing me that the president of Nigeria had sent me a letter. It had his picture on it and everything," Haines said. "I looked it up on the computer to see what the Nigerian president looked like, and it was him." Once, he received an email claiming to be from Robert Mueller, who was then the FBI director. The email was addressed to Haines, code-name "B-DOG," and it was signed with the FBI's address and official seal. "I wish you can remove doubt and suspicious and go ahead I assured you that you will never regret this fund release," the email said in part.
Haines is one of 344 victims who recovered a total of $1,758,988 through the Kansas Attorney General's office -- though when the office sent out 25,000 letters to possible scam victims, many of them were now skeptical of the promise of unclaimed money, and "Some were even angry when employees called to follow up on those who hadn't responded."
From 2005 to 2008, swindlers hoodwinked Haines, a self-employed handyman in Wichita, into spending thousands in pursuit of an imaginary inheritance from a Nigerian government official -- a con known as the Nigerian Prince Scam. Haines re-mortgaged his house three times in the process. Last year, in a settlement with the Department of Justice, Western Union admitted it knew some of its employees had conspired with scam artists to bilk people out of money and had failed to fix the problem. The company set aside $586 million to create a fund to refund victims across the U.S. and Canada... All victims who'd sent money to hucksters using the service were able to request refunds, but only those who had complained to law enforcement or Western Union were notified directly of the settlement.
"It got to the point where they were showing me that the president of Nigeria had sent me a letter. It had his picture on it and everything," Haines said. "I looked it up on the computer to see what the Nigerian president looked like, and it was him." Once, he received an email claiming to be from Robert Mueller, who was then the FBI director. The email was addressed to Haines, code-name "B-DOG," and it was signed with the FBI's address and official seal. "I wish you can remove doubt and suspicious and go ahead I assured you that you will never regret this fund release," the email said in part.
Haines is one of 344 victims who recovered a total of $1,758,988 through the Kansas Attorney General's office -- though when the office sent out 25,000 letters to possible scam victims, many of them were now skeptical of the promise of unclaimed money, and "Some were even angry when employees called to follow up on those who hadn't responded."
I guess (Score:5, Funny)
Is true at times!
Just my 2 cents
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"We from the and government were here to help!"
Even creimer makes more sense...
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But you didn't catch the "and", and that you wanted we're?
You annoying plonker. I'd think you're creimer if I didn't know better.
Just my 2 cents ;)
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"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Ronald Reagan
Just my 2 cents
He doesn't deserve it back (Score:5, Insightful)
He was painfully stupid, gullible, and greedy.
Re:He doesn't deserve it back (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes he was, but even the stupid, gullible, and greedy shouldn't be preyed on by crooks.
Re:He doesn't deserve it back (Score:5, Insightful)
I sort of agree, but it is also a form of education and/or natural selection, and the US is already in dire need of both.
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I sort of agree, but it is also a form of education and/or natural selection, and the US is already in dire need of both.
How is duping a then 67-year-old “natural selection”?
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How is duping a then 67-year-old “natural selection”?
A 67 year old male can still reproduce, especially if he really does inherit $65M.
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Re:He doesn't deserve it back (Score:4, Insightful)
My mother falls for the IT scam, but I still can't train her out of it. At least she knows not to give out her bank account number. But a part of her does not want to believe that the nice gentleman who helped her get rid of her viruses was colluding with the guy who asked for her account number, and she flat out told me that she didn't believe me. I told her that there is no company that is going to help her out on her computer for free and that no one knows she when has a virus and will be calling up out of the blue.
It's really hard to train someone who's elderly to stop trusting people.
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It's really hard to train someone who's elderly to stop trusting people.
They grew up in a time where trusting people was not normally harmful. Interactions were local. Crooks from the other side of the world did not have easy access to a victim anywhere in the world.
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They grew up in a time where trusting people was not normally harmful. Interactions were local. Crooks from the other side of the world did not have easy access to a victim anywhere in the world.
Why yes. Today's old people grew up trusting every one of the people they bought dope from and the government that kept sending them to Vietnam. That's why the time in which they were young was so tranquil, especially on our college campuses.
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My brother and I broke our folks of this nonsense. It came down to don't forward attachments via email, period. After maybe a decade of unrelenting refusal to open them, it eventually sunk in. Myself, I have a "triage" folder where emails from people I don't know or have never sent to land, and it is extremely effective.
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One of the best arguments against democracy I've seen today.
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What kind of system would you prefer?
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I don't care if I get a vote or not, as long as the stupidest 2/3 of the population don't.
I support voter ID laws too :-) If you're so stupid you don't even have ID you really shouldn't be helping steer the country. If I need ID to drive, buy alcohol, or fly I should need it to vote.
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"Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried."
Sir Winston Churchill
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Why not? (Mobile game developers do it all the time with the bullshit micro-transactions.)
Exactly how else are they going to learn?
It is obvious they _already_ failed critical thinking.
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Not with loot-boxes.
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Re:He doesn't deserve it back (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is these people that got stung by these nigerian scams aren't sympathetic. See if this was real they were attempting to assist with money laundering.
I believe that Western Union needing to be held to account for not blocking these transactions when they clearly knew it was happening is appropriate. But I don't have sympathy for these people, in every way they were trying to participate in a criminal act and they got stung because the other side was a fake criminal.
Helping someone move money out of a country that they themselves can't move out is money laundering. And if it's real and you assist you can be prosecuted and sent to jail for 5 years. But people are greedy and the see this offer and all they see is dollar signs and they don't care that they are violating the law because they think it's not a big deal.
Yeah but... (Score:2)
Devi'ls advocate (Score:5, Interesting)
The money wasn't recovered from the scammers it was paid back by Western Union, which means the real cost will inevitably be passed on to its other customers.
Doesn't falling for such an obvious con as this become self-inflicted at some point, even if some Western Union staff were duplicitous?
Although I hate to see anyone scammed out of their life savings, by saying that society will pay to bail out even obviously stupid/self-inflicted actions, is society really sending the right message, or is it just making more people comfortable with not taking responsibility for their own actions?
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Well the alternative is to say VW is just going to pass it on to the customers, let's not punish them for the emissions scandal. If you believe in the free market you'll think that competition will keep prices down so the investors will have to eat the loss. I mean, if WU could raise prices because of this why couldn't they like raise prices anyway? If they have that sort of captive market...
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I personally believe in the principle of free market economics, however you can't for a moment seriously claim that the US is a any kind of example of a truly free market.
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the principle of free market economics
And does that include wire fraud and crime? Or do you at least want some sensible restrictions on freedom?
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the principle of free market economics
And does that include wire fraud and crime? Or do you at least want some sensible restrictions on freedom?
Online? I'm not sure there are sensible restrictions (unless you believe government knows best), except for those imposed by oneself - be wary, Google stuff that seems suspicious (to good to be true), etc.
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So you think fraud should just be legal? But only online because it's somehow special?
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Well the alternative is to say VW is just going to pass it on to the customers, let's not punish them for the emissions scandal.
That's why I would like to see the executive of VW responsible for the scandal be prosecuted, pay fines, and do some prison time.
But that's just a dream, in this here world.
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Read the article again. Western Union was effectively involved in the scam.
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Being able to do this is quite frankly frightening.
Why do we let there be a system, where other people can take money out of our account, because they decide that "Nah, you never got this money."
If it can happen for illegitimate transactions, it can happen for legitimate ones.
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Hah, this system exists in Europe (notably: Eastern Europe) and people who didn't realize that were surprised by the opposite of the Nigerian Prince scam.
They received money, in exchange for goods and/or services, but the sender "overpaid" them and asked for a refund (claiming to have clicked twice or whatever). Of course, after a few weeks the original transactions disappear, the money you sent is not going to be refunded (because your bank doesn't pull money back from other banks) and instead of getting p
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Well WU do have a captive market don;t they? I mean who else does the same money transfer thing as them in the US?
Re: Devi'ls advocate (Score:2)
While I would argue the former, what am I doing siding with an obvious scammer? If there is a option C nail to a physical cross option please sign me up provided that doesn't involve tens of thousands of my dollars, otherwise I'll use the power of imagination instead
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As Western Union is a private company, the only people that will pay more to cover this are Western Union customers. And if one is naive enough to use Western Union for any purpose, than they are no better than those who fell for a Nigerian scam. So, it's simply moving the funds from one group of low-information people to another.
Not when the company's looking the other way (Score:2)
Re:Devi'ls advocate (Score:4, Informative)
The money wasn't recovered from the scammers it was paid back by Western Union, which means the real cost will inevitably be passed on to its other customers.
Businesses don't work that way. They set prices to maximize profit. If they could be making more money with higher prices THEY WOULD ALREADY BE DOING IT.
Both are true (Score:2)
>> the real cost will inevitably be passed on to its other customers.
> Businesses don't work that way. They set prices to maximize profit. If they could be making more money with higher prices THEY WOULD ALREADY BE DOING IT.
Both are true. Suppose company WU and company MG both produce a product that costs them $3 to make. Company MG charges $5. You are correct that company WU will raise its price to about $5, and not much higher, because that's the point of maximum profit given the competition.
Comp
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But in this case, the 'cost' will be a one time thing - not a marginal cost increase of the service. So if they increase the price, they will lose money since their market share will decrease - they will still need to pay the settlement amount regardless of the number of new services they sell.
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Companies don't really have profits. They have shareholders and dividends, so its still coming out of the pockets of future customers.
I'd like to see more education programs (Score:3)
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There's the little bit at the back of the brain that says "it must might be true!" that has to be overcome. There are a variety of motivations that aren't just greed.
Ie, my mother feels dumb because she doesn't know how to use computers well, and she feels dumb that I have to help her, and she wants to be independent. So when someone calls her up after she gets a computer virus and offers to help her get rid of it, she thinks that's a good thing. Oh, and it's free too, so she think she's being frugal too.
Fake scams work, for real-life training (Score:3)
The last two places I worked, corporate security occasionally sent out a "phishing" or scam email. If you clicked the link in the email, you got a page about email scams. Open an attachment in one of the fake scams, the attachment was a reminder to not open attachments.
If, instead, you clicked the "report this email" button in Outlook, you got a message saying "congratulations, you didn't fall for the scam."
That seems to work. After the first few emails sent by corporate security, the number of people falli
Re: Fake scams work, for real-life training (Score:1)
I'm sure nobody in your company has to open invoices from external parties, nobody has to open quotes sent by contractors (PDFs contain JS and postscript can probably mine cryptocurrency nowadays :D), nobody gets zips (err tar.gzs :)) with CVs and answers to the do-at-home programming quiz etc. White listing only the people that are supposed to get these kinds of attachments is not going to be a nightmarish bureaucratic process for a reasonably big company to a point where it affects your companies ability
Re:I'd like to see more education programs (Score:5, Insightful)
It only affects greedy people who think there's a pot of gold under the rainbow.
Let Darwinism take its course. Stupidity should be painful.
Greedy or desperate (Score:3)
Re: I'd like to see more education programs (Score:3)
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Dear Prince Alwasi,
Your wonderful opportunity has come in answer to our urgent prayers. We are members of a church in great need of these funds for a new roof and have been faithfully praying for just such help. In order for us to proceed, you would simply need to become a member of our church. Please see here for details:
http://www.419eater.com/html/k... [419eater.com]
Welp, there's the blueprint for the new 419 scam (Score:5, Funny)
Hi, we're Western Union notifying you of possible relief. We understand you fell victim to a Nigerian Prince Scam.
We set aside USD$586,000,000 as a relief fund, and you can claim your portion of it.
Just send us a $1490 processing fee and we will process your loss.
Re:Welp, there's the blueprint for the new 419 sca (Score:5, Funny)
We can call it the “Nigerian Prince Scam Scam”.
Clarification please? (Score:2)
Under what legal theory would Western Union be responsible for the content of the messages it carries?
Does this mean that I can sue my phone company if I fall for one of the scams that ring me up about 4 times a week every week for the past year?
Re:Clarification please? (Score:4, Informative)
Just my 2 cents
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Under what legal theory would Western Union be responsible for the content of the messages it carries?
Does this mean that I can sue my phone company if...
I didn't even RTFA, but it says it right there in TFS "Western Union admitted it knew some of its employees had conspired with scam artists to bilk people out of money and had failed to fix the problem"
Are your phone company employees participating in those phone scams? This is the difference.
Re: Clarification please? (Score:3)
BS detection (Score:5, Insightful)
https://health.howstuffworks.c... [howstuffworks.com]
This is why they are preyed on by utter shitbags who are the real villains in this story.
The scammers who prey on our most vulnerable and the greedy idiots at WU who helped them should rot in jail in some third world shithole.,
Say what you want about how it's really their fault and they should have known better. If you're lucky you'll live to be 77+ and you can feel the pain of having earned wisdom only to have it fade away, to have contributed all your life and have it mean nothing. The lack of sympathy in this thread is appalling.
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So you give all of your money to this third party insurance company (generally known as the most absolutely ethical and trustworthy and compassionate of all companies) and they promise to keep it safe and dole it out to you as you lose your mind? If they happen to just stop disbursing funds (perhaps even for agreed-upon reasons buried in a hundred pages of legalese), you hopefully have the means and wherewithal to take them to court for the next xx years to get it back?
That sounds exactly like one of these
You can't (Score:2)
You can't fix stupid...
Haines re-mortgaged his house three times in the process.
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Stupidity has many forms.
WHO-HOOO! FINALLY! I'M _SOMEBODY_!!! (Score:2)
News of the refund is out! (Score:1)
Presumably exiled princes the world over are cueing-up round two of their attempts to collect on their inheritance with the help of someone who has been so helpful in the past?
Troubled waters ahead :/
have to admire... (Score:3)
You have to admire the brilliance that is in this:
Haines is one of 344 victims who recovered a total of $1,758,988 through the Kansas Attorney General's office -- though when the office sent out 25,000 letters to possible scam victims, many of them were now skeptical of the promise of unclaimed money, and "Some were even angry when employees called to follow up on those who hadn't responded."
So their response to a scam in which people fall victim to receivein a claim that they have money waiting for them in the mail - is to send them a mail telling them that there is money waiting for them.
Someone had a very, very big glas of irony the day they decided that.
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I know I'm late for this discussion, but I only have one question: How else are they going to contact them?
Questionable behavior (Score:1)
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So it's perfectly ok to collect funds to be sent to nigerian scammers so they can continue their business? I don't think it is the best kind of aid to Africans.
Arguably, it's one of the best forms of aid. You are directly helping Nigerian locals, who know best where to spend their money. Their money is in turn spent by others that receive that money. And while they can only consume so much, they do not get such an amount that they can never spend it, so all of the money ends up in the local economy. And in direct contrast with standard aid, it comes with no strings attached: no forced consumption of obsolete western goods, no-one telling them to buy Monsanto seeds
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You are directly helping Nigerian locals, who know best where to spend their money.
Yeah, buying guns and hiring thugs.
These are organized crime figures that push these scams, and any money they get will be blown on drugs or used to prop up their power.
Can't believe that there are still people who fall for the "trickle down" bullshit.
Cashing in (Score:4, Interesting)
My local supermarket had a Western Union poster on display at the customer service desk for years. Its background was a map of Africa with Nigeria highlighted, and it advertised a reduced rate on money transfers there. Now my area (Denver 'burbs) doesn't have any unusual concentration of Nigerian immigrants; their only possible reason for the offer was to get a piece of the action.
Incidentally, the poster pointed out in the fine print that the customer would get less than the going exchange rate by an undisclosed amount, so WU was proactively going for sloppy seconds.
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That's funny, I thought for a moment you were going to say the poster WARNED AGAINST the scams.
If you google "western union poster nigeria discount" what you see up top is an advertisement:
"Western Union Online | Send money to Nigeria ... Fast transfers start at $4.99 for sends up to $50! Fast, Easy and Reliable. Reliable Online Service. 160 Years of Excellence. Leader in Money Transfer. Easy To Send And Receive."
Thus the modern version of your story.
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My local supermarket had a Western Union poster on display at the customer service desk for years. Its background was a map of Africa with Nigeria highlighted, and it advertised a reduced rate on money transfers there. Now my area (Denver 'burbs) doesn't have any unusual concentration of Nigerian immigrants; their only possible reason for the offer was to get a piece of the action.
Or just a lazy advertising department dispatching the same poster to dozens of store fronts without actually knowing the demographic of that area.
Never ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity.
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Sometimes malice is the Occam's razor choice.
Involvment of Western Union employees (Score:2)
What exactly was the nature of the employee involvement and why was neither Western Union or its employees prosecuted?
HAHAHAAA! (Score:1)