Warning. There are more of the advanced fee schemes coming out of the West Africa area - one I received yesterday purported to be from Nigeria. I forwarded it to the FBI and they responded as follows:
Dear Mr. Huebl,
Thank you for your submission of information via the FBI.Gov Web site.
In as much as the FBI receives reports of this type of activity on a
regular basis there is no need to forward any such additional emails to
the FBI.
A review of the information you provided revealed that you are being
approached over the Internet to participate in one of many variations of
an advance fee scheme being perpetrated by individuals from various West
African nations, particularly Nigeria. Victims have lost substantial
funds in the past and all requests for travel to foreign locations
should be ignored. The United States Secret Service (USSS) has
developed an excellent, detailed description of this fraud scheme, which
can be accessed at secretservice.gov. If you
have been victimized by one of these schemes, please forward appropriate
written documentation to the USSS, Financial Crimes Division, 950 H
Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20223, or telephone (202) 406-5850. We
encourage you to share this Web page with family and friends. Your
continued cooperation in this and other matters is greatly appreciated.
You do not need to forward the emails to us. If you have not, simply
delete them from your computer. Also, if you know that you are
receiving spam mail, it is advisable not to open them, because even if
you do not reply, your email address has been validated by the sender.
And, you may get other spam mail.
For your information, the Internet Tip Line (ITL) was created on
9/11/01, in response to the terrorist attacks upon America. We quickly
established a mechanism for the public to submit information to the FBI
via the Internet, and we received our first tip at 10:31 AM that first
day. Director Mueller has since made the ITL a permanent part of FBI
operations, and we have thus far received over 500,000 tips from around
the globe, from which thousands of leads have been sent to FBI Field and
Legal Attache offices for action.
Initially, almost 100% of the tips received were related to the
terrorist attacks; now, approximately 45% of all tips received are
related to almost every other FBI criminal program, e.g., drug
trafficking, organized crime, money laundering, pyramid schemes, child
pornography, fugitives, bank robbery.
Our operation is completely automated and paperless. Submitted tips are
received immediately, reviewed within minutes and prioritized by trained
Professional Support personnel, and action leads are set by Agents
within the hour, as appropriate.
I encourage you to share this information with your family, friends, and
co-workers, and encourage them to not hesitate to submit information
they may deem of interest to the FBI. Again, thank you for taking the
time to forward this report to us.
IMPORTANT - NOTE THE FOLLOWING:
The FBI does not maintain an email address to submit information or
attachments to directly; therefore, please do not reply directly to this
message via your email client. The FBI maintains an automated system
that is designed to track all information received to ensure that all
tips are addressed in a timely and efficient manner. Therefore, please
visit the FBI.GOV Web site again should you have occasion to submit
additional information. We WILL NOT open or respond to "reply" email.
Sincerely,
David N. Rushing,
Supervisory Special Agent
FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C. |
