Thursday, February 16, 2006
BY SUSAN L. OPPAT
News Staff Reporter
Michigan State Police say Nigerian scam artists took a Salem Township woman for $125,000 in an online dating scheme, then tried to hit her again by offering to get her money back for the low, low price of $965.

Detective Sgt. Fred Farkas said that the 63-year-old woman called to complain that a man she had been dating online hadn't shown up for Christmas as he had promised, and had stopped replying to her e-mails after she wired $125,000 to him for investments in the European stock market.

Farkas said the man also promised to take her away to Spain in telephone calls she thought she was making to London.

Metropolitan Police in London told Farkas in a letter he received Wednesday that the overseas telephone code the woman used in making calls to the man - 0704 - routes calls to any location in the world. In this case, to a wireless telephone in Nigeria.

Farkas said he traced the woman's money to a bank in New York that deals only with overseas banks, and then to the Liberty Bank of Nigeria.

The money, he said, disappeared at that point.

Farkas said the bank in New York has also taken a complaint from a victim in New Jersey.

He said there is no interagency cooperation that would allow him to track the money once it's in Nigeria, and he has no way to prosecute the case or retrieve the woman's money.

He said the woman contacted him Wednesday to inquire about a letter she got in the mail, asking her to pay $965 to get her money back.

He will tell her to turn the offer down, he said this morning.

Police have been warning area residents about e-mail scams originating out of Nigeria for a number of years. The most common scam involves an e-mail promising the recipient a share of millions of dollars if he or she provides a bank account number to help smuggle the money out of the country. The scam artists then empty out the bank account.

Anyone who provides bank account numbers to e-mailers sets themselves up for thefts from those accounts, police say.

Susan Oppat can be reached at soppat@annarbornews.com or at 734-482-1166.

http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-16/1140104500157750.xml&coll=2

This is so sad! I wonder how people can be so trusting.