Hello?? I can't believe many Americans fell for it. They must be such idiots. I would never fall for anything that is too good to be true. Come on, wake up and smell the coffee! DUH!

I receive the emails every day and I don't even open them anymore, I just spam them. Anytime you see a name you don't recognize with RE" account # or just you've won, you should report it to spam. Or if you open it and it says it's from another country you should automatically spam it, common sense should let you know that it's a gimmick. I hope that by spaming them it will get them caught soon.

I've received so many of these fake congratulatory letters via email (none by regular mail, thank goodness) & after reading through just a few, I was convinced that they were phony. My mother would receive these mailings & would be so anxious to go out to get a money order or write a check so that she could "win" and it was all I could do to stop her before she gave out information & money that she didn't have any reason to give out. More seniors seem to get caught up in this scam (the Publishers Clearing House, I believe, is equally to blame) and there seems no way to stop it. More of my friends have older parents that get caught up in the excitement of winning a ton of money when all they do is lose.
How sad that this crap goes on. ThankU, ABC & Brian Ross, for being there to expose these frauds for what they are.

My father was a victim of this scam with a little twist. He was contacted and told that he was being awarded a larger amount and to return the amount of the check. The bank went against it's own policy if holding the check for a number of days before allowing use of the deposited amonut. When the monies weren't where they were supposed to be they froze my father's money and he couldn't pay his bills. After agreeing to repay the amount over time the bank allowed his access to his frozen funds. He's going to be paying this off for a long time to come and on a fixed income it's going to be hard.

How stupid are people that they actually fall for this? I wouldn't exactly call Nigeria a mecca for higher education and technological advances - yet the fact exists that Americans are buying these scams. What a sad testament to the level of ignorance running rampant in the formerly great USA.

The thing with these kinds of scams is, the perpetrators are taking advantage of a dying (literally) breed: older Americans who grew up in a society where trust wasn't questioned. It's just a matter of time, hopefully, before this kind of naivete disappears.

I am so glad you are bringing this into the open. There are also many lottery scams being mailed from Canada that enclose what look like real checks from American companies. Same scam - cash this check (which turns out to be fraudulent) and send money to someone in Canada. It's a hard lesson to learn if you fall for it.

I live in St. Lucia,West Indies. After having participated in one(1)lottery that had been advertised by an entity called "Prizemasters" of Milsons point,NSW, Australia, I was contacted by another entity named,
"Overseas Services Agents" of the Netherlands.Since that time, i have been inundated by both of them , plus numerous others;offering numerous lotteries. What has aroused my suspision is their offer of tikets in the United States Powerball and mega Millions lotteries.I am very much aware of the U.S.Government exclusion of non-residents from participation in their domestic lotteries.Can you shed some light on this issue.

Regards
Roger Ghirawoo

The US government should ban all mails from Nigeria until the Nigerian government clean up their criminals. Scams from Nigeria have been going on for a very long time now. It's time the Nigerian government take responsibility for their people's actions.

More awareness should be done by the US media and government to educate Americans of scams. There are dumb and naive Americans out there who need help.

Scams of this nature are so common now that you can't place an advertisement in your local newspaper or sell anything of a higher value on ebay without attracting these con artists. My mother advertised a dog for sale in a very small newspaper in Michigan. Someone from Nigeria contacted her via an Internet phone exchange service. They wanted to buy the dog with US Postal money orders for more than the dog was worth and then have the excess funds wired back via Western Union. Ultimately the money orders would have been counterfeit and any money she would have sent back she would have lost. Having worked in the financial industry I knew this was a scam right away but have seen many people fall victim to it.

and watchout for the money order scam its the same thing u cash it and send them the money...and the letter about all the gold they have in a bank but cant touch until they find someone to invest the money in good ole america

I worked for Western Union between 1979 and 2001 when Nigerian scams first started in mid 80's. We had thousands of niave people who wired money there after receiving letters from so-called "Officials of Nigerian" on government "letterhead" promising money knowing they had NO relatives there. Even ministers fell into their trap which usually had followup requests for more funds for "taxes, paperwork, etc" to squeeze more money out of victims. Then Western Union was caught in middle of so-called Canadian sweepstakes or lotteries which used Western Union as easy conduit to get money out of their victims. But they added insult to initial scam, the victims were put on sucker lists and exploited further with followup calls claiming to be Canadian police saying they were working on their "case" even though the victim never contacted Canadian authorities. The boiler rooms then requested victims to send money to them so they could "prosecute" scammers to get their money back. I had one woman so convinced to get her "free winnings" that even though we told her you dont pay taxes on free money and only the IRS collects taxes, after holding her $20,000 money transfer from getting paid in Canada, she turned around and sent it back the next day. She'd been "convinced" by the boileroom scammers who'd called her again. Even her husband wasnt able to stop her. Canada even set up a Phonebuster website to help inform people on how to prevent being scammed or what to do when scammed.

I got this computer in 2001, after only a few months, I was daily hit with so-called Nigerian or African Fraudulent Investment scam letters which advised I was on some obscure list of being an investor (NOT). I reported as many as I could to FTC and local state attorney general without receiving any reply. After months, I could tell that there must be a format on internet in which each new scammer input their own "personal" information about some plane crash in Africa, or husband/family killed by Nigerian government police - they had lots of versions, always saying you could check out news reports of those events. All geared to get my sympathy to their plight of having $XX millions of dollars in frozen bank accounts or nefarious vaults in Nigeria, Cote D'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, even Saudi Arabia, Philippines and South America. It didnt fool me! If they had that many millions, they could have easily bribed local officials there to get access to their glorious millions regardless of the 10-20% promised as reward for helping them come to USA and giving them my bank account information which of course had to be kept secret. I was so tempted to give them a closed account I had but decided it could cause me more trouble than it was worth to get the best of them. As it was, I felt like some of them caused me to have virus problems after I reported them.

The internet has apparently not worked that well for these Nigerians so they've reverted back to mailing thousands of letters again. I was glad to read that some of these obvious scams letters have been confiscated. Everyone should be reminded, you dont have to pay for winning a prize!

I've seen this show up in my emails. nigerian scams about lost relatives dying leaving me money. I requested them to send me something in writing from attorneys' certified mail. they asked me for an address. i told them if it was the real deal they would be able to find me and notify me with no problems. this person hasn't bothered me since

Ban mail from Nigeria? Do you have any idea how many mail and telephone-related scams are generated from the U.S.?

If you think being dumb and naive is unique to Americans, you should try traveling or keeping up with international news more often.

If you didn't enter the Lottery. Then how could you win it. I've been contacted a few times by this type of scam. Usually by email and if you know how to check the sender info you'll most likely see that the senders name and the actual email account don't match. Thats a red flag right there.

My advice - avoid ANY deal with people you met on the internet that involves 1) accepting checks, money orders or wire transfers and then 2) forwarding most of the money onwards (eg, by Western Union). YOU (not your bank) are responsible for ensuring you aren't dealing with a fraudster.

Another common scam is the "Company representative" format - you are asked to accept checks, keep 10% commission and forward 90%. It sounds too good to be true, but many people are falling for it.

I write with my nickname 'godfada' for protection.i am a 27year old nigerian [male] in lagos.so many scam letters'419' do originate from Nigeria,infact i for one get ashamed of it any where it is mentioned.i will give some facts [1.]three groups that necessitated the negative invention;job loss experienced by many financial workers, greedy and ruthless international travellers/businessmen,disgruntled/former american and european residents with complete knowledge of the internal financial and other systems and inductees/collaborators / trainees. the above starte it then in 1980's but today unemployment and hardship caused by mismanagement and maladministration of our economy,laziness,highly intelligent graduates without any gainful employment, victims of government restructuring program who lost jobs,houses,property/valuables without compensation,some government and willing[bank staff/managers,agencies]collaborators that equip them with classified documents e.t.c.,juvenile deliquents.
prevention;to prevent and stop this sopcietal ill ;[1]economic stability,employment,reorientation of the polity,restructure of agencies saddled with the responsibility of prevention so that there will not be any sacred cows when treathing cases,appointment of strict people and people of integrity to head the agencies which at times have corrupt leadership.lastly , only ony thing will catalyse the above results;a credible[people with null knowledge in economics and their cohorts whom they appoint ministers and key officers run our country like a private shop],strict[when the friends or relatives commit the crime in question the president pardon them without arrest nor trial],moral[the presidents rig elections and grab power and then use it to torment the opposition],law-abiding[from 1966 till date, presidents of Nigeria do not obey law court verdicts nor human rights charter of the united nations],incorruptible[psychophants are the enemy of the nigerian presidents past and present,they make them believe that they are superhumans whose words are the law.corruption is the bane of the nigerian state.] president that will steer the country around.

Here in Los Angeles, there is a paper called the recycler where people buy, sell and trade things. I posted things on the recycler's website.

People purporting to want to buy what I was selling (car parts) have contacted me with a super down to earth and polite attitude ("my friend").

They scam is similar...For my $200 car rims, they offered to send me a $2000 check (I forget the excuse); someone will pick up the rims and I am to send $1500 back. They will let me keep $300 for the trouble ?

I drove these guys crazy...because I asked to many questions ?

It is unfortunate what is going on as regard the bogus mails and emails being sent from Nigeria to various Americans in other to scam them to send their hard earn money to Nigeria.
I am a Nigerian, a hard working Nigerian. I am currently residing in New York with a good job. I will like Americans to know that not all Nigerians are dubious or con artist. In every country, there is always a bad head whose purpose is to tarnish the image of his/her country. Most Nigerians who are involved in these activities are highly educated. They are graduates from various universities and colleges without jobs. Their activities are due to the inability of government to provide them with jobs; as a result they resulted in illegal activities that continue damaging the reputation of our beloved country.
Additionally, they have their collaborators in America mostly residing in Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami who normally provides them the tools to use in scamming the innocents Americans and Nigerians alike.
America government can stop these activities by arresting and prosecuting their collaborators in America. Finally, we the hard working Nigerians in America on our part will continue to improve our image and educating our people on the damage these few people are doing to the reputation of our great country Nigeria.

The FTC is investigating phishing- please forward phish mails to SPAM@UCE.GOV to help them stop this scourge

don't forget to 'view long headers' before forwarding them, so they can get the senders info and technique.