Nigerian Scammers

My boss the Twat nearly got money scammed this week by a Nigerian money scammer. The story is that he lets out a holiday apartment in Marazion during the summer and this guy had applied to rent it out for 3 weeks in May. Nothing dodgy about that right? And the guy who wanted to rent it out was supposed to be a Reverand of Nigerian decent, born in Australia? Starting to get strange here isn't it?

Well truth is stranger than fiction, for then the payment for the rent on the apartment was made via a cheque from his "sponsor" and the cheque was for over and above the rental on the apartment, 50% over in fact. Then the scammer wanted a Western Union cash transfer for the balance. It was at this point that the alarm bells started going off. It sounded so suspect. But if I hadn't heard about this sort of thing happening to other people on Watchdog and told my boss about it I think the dopey twat would have handed over the cash, then the dodgy cheque would have been returned as being fraudulent and he would have been £1600 out of pocket.

I had great fun last Friday with the Nigerian Scammer kept phoning up. I demanded that he provide a landline so we could call him back, he claimed he was staying in a hotel in Japan, but seemed to have an awful memory recall problem trying to remember where he was staying. Even when he did manage to provide a name of a Japanese Hotel (which he probably got off the net) and a number, the number still proved bogus.

You'd think that at that point he'd realise that we were on to him, cut his losses and do a runner? No, of course not - the scammer continued to phone the office at least 10 times during Friday morning and lunchtime, so I took great pleasure just cutting him off, or leaving him permanently on hold.

My boss phoned the bank and explained the situation to them. They said that the cheque wasn't due to clear until Wednesday anyway, and then surprise, surprise on Tuesday it bounced!!!! lol

On Wednesday, we got the following message from the Scammer after we'd told him that we would not pay him a penny until the cheque was proved not to be rubber:

IF THIS IS YOUR CONCLUSION COULD YOU PLEASE KINDLY RETURN OUR CHECK AND CANCEL THE BOOKING AS I AM NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THIS TRANSACTION WITH YOU ANY LONGER.
SEND THE CHEQUE BACK TO MAXWELL WITH THE ADDRESS PROVIDED EARLIER.

THANKS AND GOD BLESS.

REV GEORGE CRAIG



My colleage took great pleasure sending the below:

Look, you dopey TWAT, the cheque has already bounced. Now f*** off and leave us alone!

God Bless

Got to love that final touch!

;-)