Police Warn of Advanced Fee Fraud Letters
Over the past several days the Financial Crime Unit of the Bermuda Police Service have received hundreds of calls and e-mails from Bermuda residents who have all received identical ‘advanced fee fraud’ letters.
The letter, allegedly from a ‘Charles Taylor (JNR).’ has been sent from Tanzania and is addressed to persons at their private address.
The Police say that “It is difficult for Police to investigate these types of letters as the suspects use pre-paid cell phones which cannot be traced and they use free online e-mail addresses such as Hotmail and Gmail which can be created in any name.”
A Police spokesman explained that the letters are sent out by the thousands and the culprits simply download addresses from online telephone directories; in other words those receiving the letters have not been individually targeted by the scammers. Advanced fee scams involve the victims sending money in order to obtain fictitious awards or inheritance.
The Police have warned members of the public are advised to be extremely cautious when sending funds to persons who have contacted them unexpectedly, especially via the internet or to persons whose identity cannot be properly established.
Whenever I get those types of letters and they ask for money in order for me to get the “inheritance” I just tell them to take it out of the “inheritance” and they never respond!! LOL!
Has anyone ever sent a MO but reported it stolen the moment it was mailed (make amount for $2) to see if the person trying to cash it gets caught trying to cash a stolen MO
Every week I receive at least two emails of that sort.
I tell them to give the money to a needy charity but they still persist.
Pure scammers who’s time is quickly coming to an end with the widespread internet knowledge of their “tricks”
If it’s too good to be true…
Funny how the Bermuda post office deliverd one of these letters to me with just my name, parish and postal code attached. No house, street, apartment number ect. The irony is they have returned mail before with much info more attached.
The same thing happened to me. I thought this interesting considering my magazine subscriptions were missing only the postal code, and nothing was delivered for a year!!
Last night I got a letter saying the same thing about inheretance but I dont know how they got my address cause I am not listed
That’s funny because I received a text message as well as an email telling me that I had won millions of dollars….they said I had to pay the shipping and duty for it to be shipped here, they had a list of the prices and at the bottom of the email it stated that the cost was so high because of the insurance to cover the cheque in case it got lost!!!
I played along with them and they even went as far as to giving me photo and a passport…now we all know that the scammers wouldnt be that dumb and you can tell that the passport was fake and had been fixed!!!
And another thing, when they called my phone; the first guy had an Islands accent (like he was from Bahamas or Barbados or somewhere like that) and the second time they called I was speaking to a Chinese male….but they both claimed to be “Danny Jones”