Scammers strike China Daily
2017-02-25
If you don't know the English word "scam," the computer dictionary translates it as 诈骗. "Scammer" is 骗子. Scammers have hit China Daily. I received the following message today. Checking the sender's profile, I see that he/she sent it to many other people. So I decided to blog about it. This is a scam to get money and also personal information for future scams. I am sure that the moderators will remove the scammer and maybe delete the private messages if they can, but I think it would be good to leave up this blog for educational purposes because this type of scam is common on the internet (although maybe only in English).
The message is as follows:
My Dear Friend God blessed you
Calvary Greetings in the name of Almighty God, I want to tell you this because I don’t have any other option than to contact you after going through your profile as i was touched to open up to you. I am Mrs Maria Eze, A widow to Late Dr.Harry Eze (former Counselor of the Benin Embassy in Madrid, Spain. We own Treasure Art Inc and Treasure Crude Oil Marketers; we are very wealthy we have a lot of properties including Shares and houses. I am 69 years old a new Christian convert. I am suffering from cancer of the Pelvic my condition is serious; according to my doctor it is quite obvious that I may not survive the sickness.
My late husband and my only son died in the crash of Swiss air Flight 111 on the 2, of September 1998. After the death of my husband I made up my mind to do the work of God as a missionary. I sold all my husband's properties and shares to enable me raise some money to continue my mission. I raised the sum of US$11.5M(Eleven Million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars) which I deposited with a Bank here. Now that my sickness has gone to this stage, I am scared and I want the fund to be used for the work of God all over the world.
I have prayed to God to direct me to an honest PERSON who will receive this fund and utilize it for things that will glorify the name of God, after my prayers, I searched your site in the Internet, I found your email address and I decided to contact you to receive the fund. This is on the condition that you will take only 40% of the fund for yourself, 5% for any expenses, while you will use the remaining 55% for the less privileges people in the society.
If you are interested in using this fund for the work of God, please send to me your full name, address, telephone/fax number, occupation and age to enable me give it to the Bank for immediate arrangement to release the fund to you.I will also give you a text of the application Letter which you are going to fill up and send to the bank.
I can not predict what will be my fate by the time the fund will be transferred into your account, but you should please ensure that the fund is used as I have described above.
I await your urgent reply to my private Email: (deleted)
Most sincerely,
Mrs. Maria Eeze.
i just ignore such 'requests' unless the individual has a good posting history of non-racist/sexist comments, and has demonstrated some form of logic.
China has made me suspicious of strangers who say 'will you be my friend?' when i meet them.
This very morning I got a friend invitation from pyh2012. When I looked at their profile, they had 0 posts, 0 replies, 0 threads, 0 blogs, but 421 friends. No information about them at all. Unlike 421 other people, I am not interested in a "friend" about whom I know nothing at all! Why is this person collecting "friends"?
Hi! It's not just in China. This type of scam, which often originates in African countries, especially Nigeria, is sent to people all over the world, but most of all to Americans, because many Americans become hypnotized by the idea of making lots of money.
I think this was sent out to many different sites and not specifically tailored for China, as the Christian references would not have as much significance to Chinese people as to westerners. (They claim to be Christian because Christians are supposed to be honest and virtuous and care about others, although often they are not.)
Welcome to the internet in China.
Random strangers will contact you any way they can as you are a foreigner.
don't be shy about revealing their contact information, as these can be used to locate them or as fake contact information to pass on to other scammers.
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