Slippery Scam Artists: The Nigerian Soapy Smith

In terms of our marketing, not only am I omnipotent but I also have a certain omnipresence. By this, I mean I track every single email as it bounces about between all concerned parties. More often than not it just means I hold an extra saved copy of an email, but every now and again I’m forced to intervene if something looks a little wonky.

Library Photo of average Nigerian scammer

I’ll let Deborah, who performs sterling secretarial and accounting services from Butler Sheetmetal HQ, take over the telling of one particular instance of such an intervention from a few weeks back. She sent me the following email about some nefarious Nigerian:

Well, it all started yesterday morning when I arrived to start my duties in the meter cupboard.  Matt asked me to ring [name removed so as to protect the innocent] to take payment for an urgent job. I read the original email enquiry and it had scam written all over it, but Matt had promised we’d ring back.  So, I rang Michael who told me the normal procedure for making payment was for me to give him our bank details. I told him he’d have to pay by credit card and he said he would have to apply for one! In the meantime I had to go through all the rigmarole of getting a price from TNT to deliver to Lagos to be able to do a proper quote. TNT quoted £1323.00 to deliver to Lagos Airport, but they weren’t prepared to take it from the airport to its final destination. Twas a lot of messing about.  Any road up, I think we’ve shaken him off now. Suppose there’s an outside chance he could have been genuine, but my gut instinct says not.

Anyway, back to deal with more fools and time wasters respected potential customers.

You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for some of our African cousins in some respects. Especially those round Nigeria, Ghana or the Ivory Coast whose major export appears to be the scam. Let’s be fair, your average Nigerian has a worse scam rep than the notorious 19th century confidence trickster, Soapy Smith.

Bad lad Soapy Smith

So let that be a lesson to anybody thinking of pulling a fast one.

Then again, things are a bit quiet by all accounts, so we could do with the work!