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"I
received an e-mail from BiddyBob Ogodabi - she seemed in such
a sorry predicament. It was all such a shame that her father
had just been executed by the ruling junta in Nigeria..."
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The
Ogodabi e-mail
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You
do not know me. I am sorry for contacting you
at such short notice and in this way but this
is of the utmost urgency, isn't it?
My name is BiddyBob Ogodabi, Hi ya!, and I need
of your help. My father was a very wealthy man,
but he came a cropper with the Nigerian government.
He was badly executed by firing squad recently.
But before he died he managed to hide $20mn
but I need a foreign bank account into which
I can transfer the funds so that I can get hold
of it, you know how it is!
I
will happily give you 10% of the proceeds for
this transaction...
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"I wanted to help her out in any way that I could."
"And, I'll be honest, the $2mn I was going to make out
of it was in the back of my mind too, I'm only human after
all."
This
was the beginning of an electronically tearstained e-mail
we received the other day from a kindly fella who, on trying
to do what he felt was the 'right thing', ended up
losing $50,000 in a fraud which involved him handing over
money because he was asked for it.
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"She
made getting $2mn sound so easy"
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It
all began, in May of this year, when our anonymous victim
replied to BiddyBob Ogodabi, a person he had never met before
in his whole life. Here, he takes up the story:
"Firstly,
I was given an African web site to log into. I had to register
as a foreign national - this was the first step in getting
the funds over into my account. The $1000 "Security
search fee" seemed steep but the word security was
in there so I thought my $1000 payment was safe, so I paid
it."
"A
couple of weeks passed and, thankfully, I passed security."
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"Like
a floppy rag doll in a shower room"
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"Then,
another problem. The bank told me that, in order to get senior
Bank Official approval for this large transfer, I had to guarantee
0.1% of the total transaction value, $20,000. I was told that
this payment was normal in Nigeria and was a sign of what
they called "my fidelity" to the bank. It seemed
like a lot of money, so I had a good think about it. I reasoned
that this was the closest I was ever going to get to earning
$2mn for doing nothing, and what was $20,000 when you thought
of the good I would do and the $2mn at the end..."
"So
I arranged a remortgage of my property and the money went
through."
"I
was then told to wait for instructions and the $20,453,874
would be transferred into my account forthwith. I can't tell
you how relieved I was when I received that e-mail."
"I
waited and then, horror of horrors, got another e-mail asking
for $25,000. Apparently, the Nigerian government (Minister
Benjamin Ogodabi) had levied a 'super tax' on the bank
in last weeks budget. I had to pay that tax before any money
could be transferred into a westerner's bank account."
"By
this time I was starting to get cynical. How much more money
do they want from me? Are they ripping me off? But my mind
kept going back to the plight of this woman, so emotionally
described in the first e-mail. She had been through so much,
poor woman. Her father had been executed by firing squad in
the worst possible way - none of the guns fired properly and
he had to be clubbed to death."
"However,
I was determined not to be ripped off so I demanded a photograph
of Ms Ogodabi before I would go any further. I wanted to look
into her eyes to see if she was trustworthy."
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"I
never had sexual relations with that woman, Ms
Ogodabi"
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"Well,
the picture arrived and she was quite a babe. It was inscribed
'With love from BiddyBob'. Well, I choked up, bit the back
of my hand even, and so I re-remortgaged the house and put
a further $25,000 into the security deposit and tax account
and looked forward to getting further down the road to liberating
this $20mn father fund. If anything I felt more determined
by the latest set back."
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"Read
my lips, no new taxes"
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"I
then got an e-mail from the police in Nigeria. Officer Brad
Ogodabi told me that I had been ripped off and that I had
lost all my money. I had fallen for the latest scam, popular
in Nigerian internet cafes. I was shocked and stunned. But,
he said, I might be able to recover some of the funds if I
paid $4,000 into a police deposit fund. Well, it had the police
name in it so I quickly forwarded the $4,000."
"I
then got an e-mail soon after from the FBI saying that Brad
Ogodabi wasn't a police officer at all and I had lost everything.
I cried. Then I wrote to you. WhadamIgonnado?"
Have
you been ripped off by begging e-mail's? Want us to tell you
what an idiot you were? Don't bother e-mailing us, losers.
Never give money away to anyone you don't know. Other than
to us, obviously. If you've just got to send anyone you don't
know money, then send it to us. After we have bought a nice
house, a nice car, sorted our pension fund and then bought
a few holiday properties, we will give generously to charity.
Just click on the paypal logo below and away we go...
--- Please
tell a friend about this story
--
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