The Tribune

THE CYBER rascals are at it again. This time, they decided to hack into the gmail account of the president of the East Nassau Rotary Club.

Having taken over all of the information on his account, including the addresses of his friends – which, if it included the Rotary membership list would have been quite extensive – they proceeded to inform everyone that their top man had taken a quick trip to Spain, been mugged and robbed, and now desperately needed their help – pronto!

What the senders of that e-mail really needed was the crash of a cop’s billy on their thick skulls, shackles on their ankles, and a long prison term. Of course, their aim was to fill their pockets with hefty sums of easy money from people they must think are as dim witted as they are. It is astounding that they did not give up on their little tricks a long time ago. By now, the media and word of mouth must have given wide exposure to their methods. The fact that they are still at it, only slightly changing their tale of stranded woe, indicates that they must still be profiting from their racket.

There is no concrete proof, but word of mouth has it that much of these schemes originate in Nigeria. However, there are others who do not hack into and take over another person’s account. Instead they send an e-mail, pretending that they have inherited, stolen from the state, or have otherwise obtained a fortune of millions. They are desperately looking for an account in a safe haven overseas in which to squirrel away their ill-gotten gains. Of course, they offer a large percentage of their millions to their new partner — who, according to them, comes highly recommended as a person to be trusted. In return for the use of their account, the new partner is offered a large percentage of the proceeds.

These messages generally came from Nigeria with persons signing their names as among the top staff of a Nigerian corporation or government ministry. The list of persons looking for a safe overseas bank included impressive professions — lawyers, doctors, civil servants, even the military – it was a never ending list.

In the early days, all of these scams originated in Africa, mainly Nigeria. Today we are getting them from Europe — several have arrived from England using the names of some of the world’s most reputable banks. One sender even had the temerity to claim he was on the bank’s staff, and was dealing with the estate of a client, who had died without heirs. Somehow– so his tale went – he had been able to grab the estate and needed to quickly get the proceeds out of the country. The amount that he mentioned was in the millions.

The message sent by the cyber attackers, ostensibly from East Rotary president Adam Darville on March 28, was as follows:

“I hope you don’t take offence in my sudden approach. I took a trip this week to Madrid, Spain and was attacked and robbed. My belongings including my cash, credit card and cell phones were all stolen. I’ve made contact with my bank but the best they can do is to mail me a new card which will take four working days to arrive here, am currently conducting my documentation at the embassy so I can fly out. I need you to lend me some funds to settle some bills.

“Please let me know if you can assist me in anyway so I can forward you details to effect a transfer. You can reach me via email or the hotel’s desk phone. Waiting for your mail. Thanks, Adams.”

The bone-heads neither gave the name of the hotel nor the desk number that was to be called, obviously forcing the soft at heart to reply by return e-mail. And it is highly unlikely that Adam, even under stress, would fail to spell his first name correctly. Even Adam knows that his name is spelt without an “s”.

While this bogus e-mail was circulating among his friends, both here and abroad, Mr Darville, was manning a jammed telephone line on his office desk, assuring his friends that he was right here in Nassau, safe, well and doing business.

He sent out an e-mail to as many friends as he could find the addresses for — the thieves had wiped his account clean — and assured them of his good health, his safety and apologised for them being inconvenienced.

The only reason that we give these incidents such extensive coverage is to keep our readers informed so that they will not fall into the trap.

Of course, the e-mails that we receive asking to facilitate a safe bank account are now too numerous to continue the discussion. We hope that our readers are too intelligent to fall for their attempt at persuasion. However, the tall tales that are sometimes woven are not only imaginative, but amusing – nevertheless, they are obviously not believable. So do yourself a favour and generously use your computer’s delete key, then move on with your life.