New Scam Method by Nigerians Part I

First of all, a very Merry Christmas to everybody out there!!


I'm going to break this post into several smaller posts for easy reading. This is going to be a loooooooong one. So bear with me but read it - it's a good to know and keep you on alert if you come across such scam. I'll be attaching all original emails from sender and myself.


Yeap, I'm a "victim" of a scam (in PayPal's terms spoof). Why "victim"? Coz I'm alert enough to see through the scam after only the 2nd mail I received from the sender. I am lucky enough to be a heavy user of PayPal due to my business needs and hence am able to tell the difference between an authentic PayPal email from a fake at first glance.


And yes, Nigerians AGAIN. Why why why? Why does it always have to be them? Don't they know that they have an extremely bad reputation for being cheats already? 


You might say I brought this unto myself - I published an advert to sell my laptop on Facebook's marketplace. After weeks of silence, I received a PM in my Facebook inbox from this guy name Logan Smith. Below is the message, word for word, which came into my inbox:


Hello, was guessing for a gift to buy step brother of mine who is based in Africa on his birthday next month, and while browsing facebook, i saw what you have for sale and found it quite nice as a birthday gift. Would like to know if its till for sale. I am willing to offer $800 for it, including shipping cost via Usps express mail. I will be paying through paypal, because its the safest means of online payment. Hope to hear from you as soon as possible. reply me at (logansmith@operamail.com)
thanks


You can imagine how happy I was when I saw the message right? I mean hell, RM2500 for my used laptop? Of course yours truly replied to his email. How the hell would I know he's a fake? But Nigeria - yeah....oh well. I was thinking man this is a good deal cause I'm in Africa already! If I'm living in USA or any other continent, this might not be that good a deal coz see, he says USD800 INCLUDING shipping. I told him that the laptop is still available and I need to know where his brother is exactly because he only mentioned Africa right. 


He came back with this:

how are you?thanks for the kind and lovely mail...
this is where you are sending the item to.......
Name.........  .Ohai Gabriel
Address.........8,Ajana  Street IjeshaTedo
City...........Surulere
Receivers Number...+2348038537546
State..Lagos
Country.......Nigeria
Zipcode......... 23401 so get back to me with your PayPal email ID so i can make the payment..
thanks

And I can promise you there was nothing lovely about my email. It was in fact very stone cold. I did not even commit to selling him. I just wanted to know where his brother is. Although I thought this is too good to be true, I believed him. So I replied with my PayPal ID. The next part of this saga is as shocking as it can be........to be continued........