In the past year alone I have been approached by well over one hundred (100) frauds pretending to be investors. They come from all websites as they are always watching for new posts.
Mainly, they seek to obtain photocopies of your passport or other ID to use on another scam portraying to be the ID to be one of the people.they have photo identification of.
Why? Well it helps them look more believable when approaching someone in a given country to portray themselves as someone from the same area.
Money or getting you to sign blank documents seem to be the main thing oh, and bank account numbers for that "supposed" wire transfer. Blank documents that.you sign with your address and signature most likely are pasted or reprinted over some REAL FORM like a visa application to represent you are a sponsor or family member vouching for them.
Here is how you spot them fast.
Anyone representing to be a company using a gmail, yahoo or hotmail account is 99% a fraud. Think about it.. businesses always have email accountsin their business (johnsmith@honda.com).
Second - no business address. Big sign of a fraud. If they provide an address, google it. It tells you who is there. If it is a house and they represent themselves to be a big company, frauds!!!!.
Look up the actual company. This is easy and yes they do use real companies sometimes. Except when you look up the company you see people there have REAL BUSINESS EMAIL ADDRESSES. NOT YAHOO, HOTMAIL OR GMAIL.
At that point you can pretty much hit the DELETE MESSAGE BUTTON.
They sometimes call you. I love it when they call and try.to sound legitimate. Their phone number if course always gives them sway. They say they are in Saudi Arabia but the area code is within my country.
How do they do this? MagicJet. You can buy one for $30 dollarsand it comes with the area code you choose. They can pretend to be in the USA and are actually in Lagos.
Bottom line, when they provide little information or a free email address ask for more information before you will discuss anything.
That rids approximately 50% pf the flakes.
The rest will give you something more. Now you just check it out on google. You will quickly see the information provides one or more revelations that point to fraud.
Good luck, hope this helps save you time dealing with these low lifes
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Quintin
Not always true about email address. please read
Thu, 2011/12/22 - 23:47just like you, i have been approached by numerous variations of the online scams. They are from all over the world even though usually referred to as Nigerian scam or 419. In the past couple of years, they have began buying domain names. World.com is one of them and it have numerous other domains on the same server. lawyer.com gardener.com i believe.. and many others you will see on the world.com site. There are actually many legitimate individuals using Gmail and Yahoo and such who do not have company websites. So it's not always a giveaway if the mail comes from Yahoo..etc.