The Blog Of Dysfunction

I became active on the net as soon as it became available in India — paying as much as Rs. 120 per hour, 4 to 8 hours a day. That was surely a crazy thing to do, but soon the Widow of a certain Army office from Nigeria offered to me what was worth millions of times the money I was investing on the net.

God bless her “late” husband who had stashed away hundreds of millions of US Dollars (worth thousands of millions of Indian rupees). And let the widow be blessed that she wanted to give it away to me after having heard about me from a very “reliable’ contact of mine. God bless that contact also because he/she could have appropriated the money in the first place.

What put me off (silly me) was the dear “Sir/Madam” at the start of the email. How come the “reliable” contact knew me in and out to vouch for my integrity, but yet harbored some doubts about my gender. I mean who after spending five minutes with me would still retain a doubt about my being a man. I have never entertained the idea of cross-dressing, let alone a trans-gender surgery. Thus the fool that I was (so some thought) I simply did not reply to claim my fortune.

Four years from thence I read about men who were not man enough to smell the rat and who sunk hundreds of thousands to get the ill-gotten money of another widow. Fortunately he was man enough (or was it the smarter woman in his life) to report it to the police — which unearthed the scam. The Nigerian Widow Scam. Going by many names, she has by now promised trillions of dollars to as many suckers — who has by now lost hundreds of millions, without succeeding in laying their hands of a penny of her husband’s ill-gotten money.

It is reported that one can charter a bank for a mere $20,000 in Nigeria. So all what they need to dupe thousands (among those suckers who are born every second now) of people is to charter a bank, buy emails which sell by the millions on CDs, and send emails day and night. Once the customer responds, he is made to open a joint account and deposit a small amount of money — which is siphoned off promptly to Nigeria. Then the demands start coming. Money for stamp paper, money for other formalities, money to bribe officers. Sky is the limit for the demands and the “hopeful” dishes out money in proportion to his gullibility. Since the widow’s cache was her husband’s ill-begotten money, the victim dares not report it to anyone including the police. For every thousand persons duped, perhaps one reports.

Once the $20,000 bank makes its millions it simply crashes under the load of “unreturned” debts and other operating expenses. All papers are presumably burned. Nobody can trace them. And then they start a new branch, and look for yet more suckers.

Please remember:

• If something is too good to be true, then it is surely too good to be true
• If the “widow” does not even know whether you are a sir or madam, how is “she” so sure that you are a person of unequalled integrity to handle the billions without cheating her
• How is it that in a country where multiple marriages and large families are a norm that a widow does not have a next of kin who does not want this loot
• If the funds have been ill begotten in their country, it is also illegal in our country

A sucker is born every second. But wonder how so many remain so gullible though they have the intelligence to use computers. Oh, the human frailty — and greed, of course.

Guest Posting By: Dr. Johnson C. Philip
Visit My Website at The Panacea