I received this email not long ago, but to my bewilderment Gmail had moved it to my Spam folder.
***
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Federal Republic of Nigeria
Lagos Liaison Office
13/15 Kofo Abayomi Street,
Victoria Island,
G.P.O Box 1727,
Lagos.
Re: An Open Letter To All Scam Victims,
Attn: Scam Victims,
We sincerely apologies for all the damages you must have gone through in the hand of Nigerian fraudsters. We are Projecting favourably the image of the government and people of Nigeria locally and internationally through a proactive mechanism (in line with global best practices) of informing, enlightening and educating Nigerians and the International Community about Nigeria.
If you have been scammed send your name and address to us via the email address stated below for verification at Western Union and MoneyGram offices and after verification if truly you have been scammed you will be reimbursed with the sum of twenty thousand dollars only. The compensation fund has already been insured and the transfer charges have been paid by the Federal Government of Nigeria to avoid unnecessary deduction from the fund. Please note that we have never held any scam victims compensation programme in Nigeria. This is the First-Of-Its-Kind.
This email address is set up for this compensation purpose only: ngsvcc.nigeria2@gmail.com
Please do not respond to email which asks you to send your username and password.
Yours sincerely,
Emmanuela Awure (Mrs)
Oversea Communication Department
***
Bless your heart, Mrs. Awure!
As someone who has been fleeced by loads of Nigerian scammers in my day, it’s good to see that the Nigerian government is finally being proactive in dealing with it. The twenty thousand dollars won’t cover all I’ve lost, but it may be enough to help me get my life back together. Maybe at last I’ll be able to get some closure on this difficult, sheep-related chapter of my life.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice, that’s you, and four is me again. You see how it works. Sometimes I sit outside and pick the petals off of daisies while singing that to myself. I do it over lunch breaks from my lucrative, work-at-home job. I should be getting my first paycheck next week! And to think I only had to put down a few thousand dollars to buy in.
I expect that the Oversea Communication Department is swamped with the task of returning all of this money to its rightful owners, and postage from Nigeria must be expensive. I thought it might be easier for them to do it by direct deposit, so I just went ahead and sent them my bank account information. I also included the account numbers, expiration dates, and security codes for all of my credit cards, as they seem like trustworthy fellows.
One thing’s for sure: Nigeria needs to regulate their banking industry.
