419 by post.

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Apr 2010 Posts: 19

Hi 419 forums,

I have been a fan of the forums for a long time now but never felt the urge to post before, recently a member of my family received a classic 419 message but via the post. It is claiming to be from china but it includes no contact address other than a email, and what looks like a skype number.

Now if this was a email I would have just said delete the message, but as I said this has arrived via post and now some of my family is concerned because it would appear they have our address, would it be advisable to take this letter to the police.

Thanks for reading.

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 8:33 am

The police may be interested, but the recipient has no need to worry. The lad will have got hold of a list of names and addresses from somewhere, and mailed all of them.
Other scam letters may well follow.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Apr 2010 Posts: 19

Thanks I was planning do doing as such, I have never seen a 419 by the post before though so it kinda made me think.

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 9:40 am

We get them on the work fax machine sometimes. In the 2 years I have been working in this office, I would have seen 3 of them.

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 9:48 am

chinaspecial wrote:

I have never seen a 419 by the post before though so it kinda made me think.

Fake lottery scams by snailmail are very common, and aimed at the elderly mainly. The traditional 419 scam is rarer.

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 9:53 am

I once had a snail mail lottery scammer about six months before I joined here. It was binned and I had nothing since. As said above, they just got hold of a snail mailing list and blitzed it. They will be more interested in the ones who reply than those who don't.

Edited to add - Don't be surprised if the police are not that interested. They will see it as being more a waste of their time to look into it than anything else. Unless, you can hold a culprit by the scruff of the neck (metaphorically of course) the police would like to think of it as you bringing it to their attention. Which basically means that it doesn't get treated as anything they have to put in any footwork into.

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 10:31 am

Sometimes they will post a warning on their website for the benefit of possible other local recipients, which the local press will report.
It's worth reporting scams for that reason. And it gives the authorities an idea of the scale of the problem.

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 3:36 pm

It's true that the 419 isn't just confined to email. My mum got a lotto-scam SMS from a Cambodian phone last year! It said to reply to the sms with an email address, off course we just deleted the message but it does make you wonder where someone in Cambodia got my mum's mobile number...

The police surely wouldn't mind you giving them the letter but keep in mind that odds are very little will happen with it (if anything). It's most likely a one-off event and they won't know you or your family personally. There are even ones which are personally addressed to you, in which case they would have gotten hold of a database with some personal info in it and mail-merged some letters, which is still pretty creepy to think about!

Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:51 am

Krichauff wrote:

We get them on the work fax machine sometimes. In the 2 years I have been working in this office, I would have seen 3 of them.

boy, you're lucky. we get three a day some days. definitely 8-10 a week :/ what a waste of paper and ink Laughing

Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2010 3:42 am

Mr Tambourine Man wrote:

Sometimes they will post a warning on their website for the benefit of possible other local recipients, which the local press will report.
It's worth reporting scams for that reason. And it gives the authorities an idea of the scale of the problem.

That is a good point, however, it's best to recognise that not everywhere is that proactive. Maybe, it's best to go straight to the local press instead

419Eater is my life Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 366

My company about 20 years ago got a lot of scam letters. At that time the police were interested in them to look for evidence that could be used. We were receiving a half dozen per month eventually delivered them to the police un-opened.

The police at that time among other things were focused on charter shopping flights from Nigeria to London. The letters provided enough information to identify individuals and the arrest them (and scammed cash) on their arrival in the UK.

The source of the mailing addresses the scamers used were international directories at the time. (Gotta love minor errors in listings)

As the volume of scams rose the police became focused on actual scam victims and are no longer interesting in tracking mailings.

p.