Snail Mail Scam from South Africa? Is it 1990 again?


I am used to getting all sorts of preposterous e-mail scam messages in my various electronic mail accounts, but I was amazed one day recently to receive an actual Air Mail letter through the old U. S. Postal Service from South Africa. My name and address were hand written on the envelope with the incorrect middle initial, so I was quite curious what it was:


Wow, someone actually went through the trouble of mailing this letter all the way from South Africa to me in the hopes I would contact them so they could pay me some portion of that $8.5 million. Do they not realize these scams have been around forever, and that modern day scam artists use this wonderful medium known as the Internet? This mailing cost them real time, effort, postage and paper to send this to me, not just a bulk e-mail burst from some mailing software. I hope they do not think the little "MEMO" line at the bottom added anything to their letter since that does not look very impressive at all (no real letterhead?) and just looks like something added to the bottom of their document before they laser printed it (and the other 5000 copies of it.) The signature is even just a printed scanned signature of "Patrick". So this all powerful attorney, Patrick Nguema (Esq), signs his name to some unknown person in the United States simply with a scanned image saying, "Patrick"? Sorry, I do not think most real attorneys sign anything that way!

I do love how they are going to pay me that money simply because I have the same last name as the late "Mr. Jia Chou, a national of your country." Do they realize how many people there are with the last name "Chou"? Even though more recent immigrants spell the same Chinese name as "Zhou" now, there are still plenty of us with the "Chou" spelling in the United States. I wonder how many of there letters they sent out and how much of a response they received? 

I noticed they did include an e-mail address of "dr.patricknguema@minister.com". I almost want to find some other scam e-mail message I received and forward a copy to that e-mail address. For some reason that seems appropriate.

Comments

Unknown said…
I too received this letter only it was to Pia D Forte I could see that is was a scam so I sent him a e-mail and told him, since he has the assets he should come to the US and come and meet us in our Attorney's office along with the check, LOL he then sent me a e-mali requesting a certified copy of passports, proof of address, Power of Attorney (right it's on it's way) phone number..etc. This guy is good, his e-mail had a lot of mombo jumbo legal talk. I can see how some can be victims of this scam when all they see is the $$$$ signs. people beware...
6:07 PM
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