Internet Scams: Banking with the African Development Bank

Internet banking scams such as this one typically use the inheritance scam that requests that the person receiving the email pose as next of kin or as a relative for a deceased person. This is so the bank manager can get access to the money in the bank account that the dead person left behind. In return for the scam victim's cooperation, the scam victim is deceived into thinking that they will get a share of the large fortune that was left behind. The scam victim normally becomes subject to the check scam after replying to the scammers request for information such as name, address, telephone number and more.

The African Development Bank is used often in many Internet scams in order to lend credibility to the scam letter thereby making it more believable. The African Development Bank, however, is just one of many banks mentioned in scam letters from Africa. Some Internet banking scams will also mention the Central Bank of Nigeria. Inheritance scams are usually combined with the banking scam since the bank holds the dead person's money. In nearly all of the Internet scams that involve banking, the amount of money stated in the scam letter is in the millions. Internet banking scams not only come from Africa and countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast but they also come from Europe, Asia and other places around the globe.

Please Reply Urgent

Monday, April 14, 2008 3:33 PM
From: "Hamid Mohamed"
Add sender to Contacts To: solano226@orange.net

FROM MR. HAMID MOHAMED,
BILL AND EXCHANGE MANAGER,
AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
OUAGADOUGOU,
BURKINA FASO.

Greetings and compliments of the season,

I am making this proposal to you based on my conviction that you will be capable of championing this business cause.

In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of $10.6m US dollars (Ten Million Six hundred Thousand US Dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customer, late Mr. Abdul Rehman Afzal an Afghani who died along with his entire family in an American bomb attack on the city of Kandahar, Afghanistan in the year 2003.

Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as next of kin, business partner or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines but unfortunately I learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him during the bomb attack leaving nobody behind for the claim. It is therefore upon this discovery that I now decided to make this business proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and I don't want this money to go into the bank treasury as unclaimed bill.

The Banking law and guideline here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after five years, the money will be transferred into the bank treasury account as unclaimed fund. The request of foreigner as next of kin in this business is occasioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner.

I wish to inform you that 40% of this money will be for you as foreign partner, in respect to the provision of a foreign account, while the remaining 60% would be for me. Thereafter I will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentages indicated. Therefore to enable the immediate transfer of this fund to you as arranged, you must apply first to the bank as relation, business partner or next of kin of the deceased indicating your bank name, your bank account number, your private telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and location where in the money will be remitted.

Upon receipt of your reply, I will send to you by fax or email the text of the application. I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer.

You should contact me immediately as soon as you receive this mail.

Trusting to hear from you immediately.

Yours faithfully,
Hamid Mohamed

There are many attributes by which the Internet banking scam can be recognized aside from mentioning a bank and the statement that a person died and left a fortune in a bank account. The typical Internet scam that uses the scam letter will mention millions of dollars or pounds in the bank account. The word "urgent" seems to be a notable characteristic of many similar email scams. In addition, bad use of English seems to be another characteristic such as using the word "urgent" when the adverb "urgently" should be used instead. Learning how to recognize Internet scams such as this one can help to stop email fraud as well as reporting a scam to government agencies such as the FBI.