My 1st (and likely only) time.

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 20 Jul 2008 Posts: 1

I had read this forum a couple of months ago, and found it fascinating. I'd never received any email like this before (in about 7 years of heavy internet usage). I got my first today out of the blue:

"Dear Friend,

My name is Kofi Stephen am the Regional Manager of Barclays bank of Ghana. I got your information on my recent search for an overseas partner among other names. I write you this proposal in good faith; I am 44 years old married with two lovely kids. I am a devoted man of peace.

I have packaged a financial transaction that will benefit you and I, as the Regional Manager of the Barclays bank it is my duty to send in a financial report to my head office in the capital city Accra at the end of each business year. On the course of the last year 2007 business report, I discovered that my branch in which I am the manager made Six Million and Fifty Thousand United State dollars (US$6,050,000.00 USD) which my head office are not aware of and will never be aware of. I have placed this funds on what we call escrow call account with no beneficiary. As an officer of this bank I cannot be directly connected to this money, so my aim of contacting you is to assist me receive this money in your bank account and get 40% of the total funds as commission.

There are practically no risks involved, it will be a bank-to-bank transfer, and all I need from you is to stand claim as the original depositor of these funds who made the deposit with my branch so that my head office can order the transfer to your designated bank
Account.

If you accept to work with me I will appreciate it very much. Email me back so that we can go over the details. "

So, I sent back this email:

"Dear Kofi,

As a woman of god I read your email with a heavy heart, as it is a sin to steal (see Exodus 20:15 "You shall not steal", and Deuteronomy 5:18 19 "Neither shall you steal."). I cannot help but feel this is stealing. And as you have searched for me so heavily, I am sure you are aware that I too work for barclays bank, and I would not be able to help you for this second reason. Also because of a law in this country that states that if I know fraud is occurring in our company and I do not do anything about it I too would be held responsable and could go to jail. I have just reported you to Mr Michael Redmond, the head of the UK fraud department and he in turn will contact Barclays in Accra, Ghana. As we do not know what area you are from, it will likely there will be a mass audit of all banks and regions (such an occurence happened in Kenya two years ago).

I hope you understand why I cannot help you, why I must report you an I hope God shows you why what you have planned and what you are doing is wrong. I find the best way to reveal a sin is to look into the eyes of your children, as innocence lies there.

Go with god."

Firstly, I don't work for Barclays, but I have worked in a bank. Secondly I am the furthest thing from a christian you could find. There is no Michael Redmond.

I know this is probably minor stuff to you, but I thought it was funny.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 1043

He will probably reply anyway. Some lads don't even bother reading your email and just fire off script part 2. Others will try and convince you it is legal and 100% risky free.

If you want to get into scambaiting and of course you do. It's everyone's favorite e-sport. Then you should think about learning how to straight bait.

One thing that worries me is that you seem to be using your real email address. You should get a baiting account with all fake details

Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 7:45 pm

Don't use your real address.

Also, lads do not really fear law enforcement... bribing policement is just an expense.

Master Baiter Joined: 19 Apr 2007 Posts: 108

Don't forget that the whole of the original letter will undoubtedly be a fiction. That's what makes it a scam.

There's very unlikely to be a Kofi Stephen at Barclays, Ghana, and certainly no $6m dollar discrepancy for Barclays to discover if you could somehow get them to investigate for real.

Your email was fun, and made me smile, but I don't think it will worry the lad. It would be more annoying and timewasting for him if you ran a straight bait by showing interest, then winding him up by numerous delays, misunderstandings, general incompetence and muddle-headedness.

I've still much to learn about baiting, but there's loads of useful ideas, information (and entertainment) if you read around here.

(P.S. I had a similar offer recently from the manager at the Peoples National State Bank of China....interesting that such an important world organisation uses a free yahoo.com address for its email, and a UK mobile phone number for its Head Office.) Shocked

Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 8:24 pm

@1st timer - welcome to Eater. Very Happy

To get you started, there are some links in my signature line that have some excellent info.

Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 10:49 pm

Welcome - and congratulations on your first 419 email! You must have awesome spam filtering for your account! Have fun baiting and for your sake I hope this is your last 419 too Wink

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