Is it possible to report an internet scheme? (To steal money?)

[Karenca]

Can I report this to any authority?--I just received this email-----

From: "JERRY PONDER" <[email protected] > Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Date: Fri, 08 Dec 2006 23:58:18 +0000
Subject: PONDER & ASSOCIATES
PONDER & ASSOCIATES
(LEGAL PRACTITIONERS)
LONDON - UK
Hello,
I was privileged to capture your names from the Internet. My name is Barr. Jerry Ponder, a legal practitioner and the personal Attorney to my late client who died along with his wife and his two sons and one daughter on a ghastly motor accident over 3 years now August 13, 2003. All the occupants in the vehicle lost their lives. I am convinced that it was the grace of God that made me to locate you. My client was a successful and accomplished family man, who made enough fortune before his untimely death.
Since then I had made several inquiries through your Embassy to locate any of my clients extended relative but this exercise has proved unsuccessful. After several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to trace his relatives through the Internet to locate any member of his family but much progress was not recorded. My late client was an influential wealthy businessman, an oil magnate here in London, UK and he left behind a deposit of Ten Million Two Hundred Thousand United States Dollars only US$10,2OO,OOO.OO in his domiciliary bank account in CHANNELS INTERNATIONAL BANK UK here in London-United Kingdom. After the death of my client his bankers contacted me as his Attorney to provide his next of kin who should inherit his fortune.
The board of directors of his bank adopted a resolution and I was mandated to provide his next of kin for the payment of this money within 28 working days or forfeit the money to the bank as an abandoned property.
The bankers had planned to invoke the abandoned property decree of 1996 to confiscate the funds after the expiration of the period given to me. Despairing at the point of exhaustiveness, fortunately I came across your name to my utmost amazement I discovered that you bear the same surname with my late client and coincidentally you are nationals of the same country.
I am Convinced that you may be linked with my late client or that you might provide clue to my search, I therefore, decided to contact with these facts before me because of the similarities. By virtue of my closeness to the deceased and his immediate family, I am very much aware of my client financial standing and the bank account he operates.
I have reasoned very professionally and I feel it will be legally proper to present you as the next of kin of my deceased client so that you can be paid the funds left in his bank account hence I contacted you.
I seek your consent to present you as the Next of Kin to the Deceased since you are at an advantage, so that the proceeds of this Bank Account valued at US$10.2m Million Dollars can be paid to you.
We shall both share the funds 50% to me and 50% to you, I shall assemble all the necessary Legal Documents that will be used to back up our claim.
All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us seeing this deal through. I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of law. Please get in touch with me by email: [email protected] to enable us discuss further.
Best Regards
Barr. Jerry Ponder.

[sam sarrha]

1. i get a couple dozen a week, but i am too busy planning to spend my Lottery winning to bother

[Karenca]

2. Oh, OK-----

I've never received one before

Thanks





: )

[Redstone]

5. You haven't? Your ISP must have GREAT spam filters. Everyone else gets this nonsense

in one variation or another at least onece a week.

The amazing thing is how many people actually fall for it, even though it's been around for at least ten years.

SO many people have lost SO much money, it would make you laugh if it weren't so pathetic.

Redstone

[Karenca]

7. Yahoo mail.

Barely any spam.

[Redstone]

3. What would be the point? There are 20,000 people running variations of the

"Nigerian Scam;" you stop one and the other 19,999 will just keep sending out spam.

Just delete it and go on to the next thing.

Redstone

[Karenca]

4. Thanks Redstone.

I'll just delete it.

I wasn't familiar with the scam.

[Redstone]

8. See my response #5 for more info. It's truly amazing that this one hasn't made it

to your inbox before.

Redstone

[Karenca]

10. I get about one spam email every other month or so

So I was surprised to see this in my inbox.

I thought it was quite unique!

[canetoad]

6. It is possible

but why would you bother. There are a zillion of these emails going around. There is no such website as kartoncraft.org, you could spend a bit of time reporting abuse to yahoo if you were so inclined. All that would happen is the perp. would get another disposable email addy and a new name. I wouldn't fret about something like this.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. Yes.

Forward it to the Secret Service at <[email protected]>. If you've lost no money, add the words "no loss" at the top of the forwarded message.

[Critters2]

11. State Attorneys General like to know that their constituents are getting this crap, too.

Not much they can do about it, but they like to have a heads up. If nothing else, they add them to the presentations they do, warning people about scammers.

Gotta go. I have an important transaction with a Nigerian fellow to complete.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. Just delete it. This is a variation on the Nigerian scheme.

A brazillion of these spams go out every day.

[Telly Savalas]

13. The SEC has actually gone after a handful of email spam rings

which pump and dump penny stocks.

I know that's not applicable here, but if you were ever to get such spam touting a dodgy looking stock, it only takes a couple minutes to notify the SEC. Since their resources are overstretched as is (thank you, Mr. Bush), they'd probably not do anything, but you never know.

And in response to some of the advice you get here:

Even if you call 911 on somebody robbing a gas station, there will still be 20,000 other people robbing gas stations. Does that deter you from calling 911?

My guess is that a huge chunk of the people who get suckered by these scams are elderly people who are a bit naive about the internets. So the sort of asshole who chooses to prey on such folks more than deserves to be reported to appropriate authorities.

Granted, my ISP has a kick-ass spam filter. If I were to see dozens of such emails a week, I'd probably ignore and delete 'em too. Not trying to be holier-than-thou here.

[Karenca]

14. That's why I asked

I know that there are many schemes that prey on the elderly-My grandmother was the victim of
one once.

So thanks for your post - I am going to report this...I just needed
to know who/where I report this crap to.

[Telly Savalas]

17. But to be clear...your email isn't under the purview of the SEC

[LisaL]

15. I've gotten a few of those. I just ignore them.

[Karenca]

16. The grammar was atrocious! nt

[TangoCharlie]

18. Grammar's not bad

Grammar is ok for someone whose first language is not English. Could be from Russia, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Ghana, anyplace where the SEC, FBI, etc have no jurisdiction.

I ignore these "get rich quick" schemes. I prefer the spams that show me how to increase certain body parts, decrease other body parts. Those are all really good deals.

[demgurl]

19. Karenca....

I get about 20-30 of these a week! I hate scams as well but I am not sure anyone will even do anything. I recently found out about a pretty huge scam by a well known business. I alerted the Attorney General for their state. I really wanted the news out there since everyone has heard of this company. I contacted news organizations and when the Attorney General's office said they would see what they could do but they generally handle cases which cover a great many people, (I was taken, the company had my card and put unauthorized charges on it) I wrote a long email with MANY links showing them how far and wide this reached.

The Attorney General got my money back for me and promptly closed the case! They are not following up in any way and I have not heard from a single news organization. This makes me sick because there are many web sites out there dedicated to this one company and how they do this regularly. In fact, if you try to call them and complain you will get an automated message explaining that you did sign up for this stuff, your card was charged correctly and they do not give refunds! How often must you get complaints if this is the recording from your customer service department?!?!?!

At least you know this one is a scam but a lot of people do not know about the one I am so angry about. By the way, when I researched my scam, I found out about an associated one you and others should be warned about. When you order items online and you see a box offering things like $10 off your next order, etc....do not click on it unless you plan on doing it. This is not a part of the company. It is a part of the checkout people and when you click on the box your credit card information you just paid with is automatically used to do monthly charges for the program you just joined by clicking!!! Lots of people have found charge after charge month after month after they clicked on the box just to see what the deal was about.

[Karenca]

21. That's what must have happened to my

son's credit card.
Every month, a charge for 'protection plus', or something like that.
The charge also got higher every month.
The CC Fraud Dept. did credit him and send him a new card.

There's so much crap going on, it's quite unbelievable!

[demgurl]

23. It may have been what happened to him.

Some foks out there complained that they never paid much attention because it was like $10 a month. ($9.99, maybe?) Several people wrote to say they kept meaning to ask their spouses what it was but it was such a low amount and they kept forgetting. When they did figure it out they were livid.

Allegedly the people doing this are somehow connected to the people I got involved with. Some of the people involved over here were also involved in similar scams overseas. I can't believe I could not get any media interest. The business is about as well known as McDonalds. You would think they would want to warn folks about it. Why worry about people being taken for a ride when there is always a new blonde missing right around the corner?

[Karenca]

25. That's exactly what happened

It started at 9.95
and then 14.95
and then 32.95.

Just like you said.

[demgurl]

28. The sad part is that it does not say you will be charged...

just by clicking on the button. Most reasonable people would assume that you could click on the button but as long as you do not provide your credit information, you will be fine. No one I read about imagined that their information would be handed off from one company to another without express approval.

You should read all of the stories, they are amazing. These companies are making millions of dollars doing this. I went from site to site and I counted up a sampling of stories. I estimated, from Google results, how many complaint sites there are and how many people complained at each site. I then realized just these cases are in the hundreds of thousands but that the real number must be in the millions these companies are making. It is mind blowing and I wonder why no one higher up will do anything about it. They keep the amount debited out at a low number so that most people do not even try to challenge it. If you contact their company they will say you agreed to the automatic debiting each month. From what I can discern, the company you checked out with is not involved in any way and has no idea it is even happening. I bring this up because some of the stories I read say they will never do business with that store again. The stores do not know this is going on.

[Kingshakabobo]

20. You could join the on-line vigilante fight to waste these people's time....

.....and money.

This website is dedicated to stringing the scammers along while wasting their time and money.

There is some really funny shit on this site. Hours of guaranteed fun,

http://www.419eater.com/html/bigman.htm

TITLE: Busted!
SCAMMER NAME: Ony Obo
SCAMMER LOCATION: Lagos, Nigeria
SCAMBAITER: Shiver Metimbers


For a slight change, we have a scammer trying to ply his trade via a different routine. This time it's a repentant dying man, wanting to distribute his millions to charity. Of course, were someone to reply to this email wanting to help, the victim would have course pay fictitious "fees" to a fake barrister that the scammer would hire to handle the cash transfer.

We've had carvings and artwork from scammers on quite a few occasions now, and I think it's time to move on to other ways to cause misery for these thieves, so for my final attempt at getting artwork out of a scammer I'll try for something a little different. Lets continue....

[Karenca]

22. Ha ha!

:rofl:

[Kingshakabobo]

24. This sent me in to a laughing fit:

[kiahzero]

26. Contact the FBI.

Such scams are illegal, and they were reporting on Countdown a few weeks ago that they were taking complaints.

[Karenca]

27. I am reporting it.

Thanks. :)