Daniel in Brookline: Iraq: The New Nigeria

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Iraq: The New Nigeria

Those Nigerian e-mail scams have gotten plentiful, haven't they? They don't lose time, either -- within a week after the death of Yasser Arafat, I got an e-mail purporting to be from his widow, asking for assistance in moving Arafat's ill-gotten gains. These scams have been making the rounds of the Internet for years.

This is the first time I can recall getting one pertaining to the Iraq war, though --

From: Sgt Ferry
Date: Jul 8, 2006 11:40 AM
Subject: Hello
To: daniel-in-brookline@bblt.org

Good Day,

I hope my email meets you well. I am in need of your assistance. My name is Sgt Ferry Bakker, Jr. I am in the Engineering military unit here in Ba'qubah in Iraq,we have about $25 Million US dollars that we want to move out of the country. My partners and I need a good partner someone we can trust. It is oil money and legal.

But we are moving it through diplomatic means, to send it to your house directly or a bank of your choice using diplomatic courier service.The most important thing is that can we trust you? Once the funds get to you, you take your 40% out and keep our own 60%. Your own part of this deal is to find a safe place where the funds can be sent to. Our own part is sending it to you.If you are interested i will furnish you with more details. But the whole process is simple and we must keep a low profile at all times.
The fund at present is under the custody of a finance company security vault. I want a straight answer from you if you will be interested to make this deal successful for us , you responds and send to me your name , address and phone number.

I look forward to your reply and co-operation, and I thank you in advance as I anticipate your co-operation.

You can reach me on via email :
Waiting for your urgent response. reply me at
Regards,
Sgt Ferry Bakker

This has all the earmarks of a classic scam. Please note the laughable unit identification, and that the contact info at the bottom has been removed. A quick Google search found other instances of similar e-mails, sometimes with quite different e-mail addresses.

Do yourselves a favor, folks. If you're serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, and have fistfuls of cash to smuggle out of the country, please don't ask for my help; such requests, if I can bring myself to take them seriously, will be forwarded along to the appropriate authorities. (I used to be a military policeman, remember?)

This request isn't worth taking seriously.

# posted by Daniel in Brookline @ 6:44 PM