Has any of you received this email?

Anti-Terrorist And Monetary Crimes Division FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
J.Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue,
Nw Washington, D.C. 20535-0001
Website: www.fbi.gov
DATE: 11/12/2008

Attention Fund Beneficiary,

This is an official advice from the FBI Foreign Remittance Telegraphic Dept, It Has Come To Our Notice That The C.B.N Bank Nigeria District Has Released 15 Million Great British Pounds Sterling equivalent to 30 Million U.S Dollars Into Bank Of America In Your Name As The Beneficiary, By Inheritance Means.

The C.B.N Bank Nigeria Knowing Fully Well That They Do Not Have Enough Facilities To Effect This Payment From The United Kingdom To Your Account, UsedWhat We Know As A Secret Diplomatic Transit Payment S.T.D.P To Pay This Fund Through Wire Transfer, They Used This Means To Complete The Payment.

These letter serves as notification of the present transaction confirmed in your name, on our research and investigations as a mode of operation with the FBI Banking Commission, we investigated a fresh transfer what of million dollars as mentioned above in your name. The funds are undergoing proper verifications to proof the legitimacy of the transaction, you are to provide all the legal documents to back up the transaction and clear all requirements on your behalf.

They Are Still, Waiting For Confirmation From You On The Already TransferredFunds Which Was Made In Direct Transfer So That They Can Do Final Crediting To Your Account. Secret Diplomatic Payments Are Not Made Unless The Funds AreRelated To Terrorist Activities Why Must Your Payment Be Made In Secret Transfer, If Your Transaction Is Legitimate, If You Are Not A Terrorist, Then Why Did You Not Receive The Money Directly Into Your Account, This Is A Pure Coded ,Means Of Payment?

Records Which We Have Had With This Method Of Payment In The Past Has Always Been Related To Terrorist Acts, We Do Not Want You To Get Into Trouble As Soon As These Funds Reflect In Your Account In The U.S.A, So It Is Our DutyAs A Word Wide Commission To Correct This Little Problem Before This Fund Will Be Credited Into Your Personal Account. The funds are presently on hold for further proof of the legal documents before releasing directly to you.

Due To The Increased Difficulty And Unnecessary Scrutiny By The American Authorities When Funds Come From Outside Of America, precisely Africa, The FBI Bank Commission For Europe Has Stopped The Transfer On Its Way To Deliver Payment Of 15 Million GBP. EQV. 30 Million US Dollars To Debit Your Reserve Account And Pay You Through A Secured Diplomatic Transit Account (S.D.T.A). We Govern And Oversees Funds Transfer For The World Bank And The Rest Of The World.

We Advice You Contact Us Immediately, As The Funds Have Been Stopped And Are Being Held In Our Custody ,Until You Can Be Able To Provide Us With A Diplomatic Immunity Seal Of Transfer(Dist) Within 3 Days From The World LocalBank That Authorize The Transfer From Where The Funds Was Transferred From To Certify That The Funds That You Are About To Receive From Nigeria Are Antiterrorist/Drug Free Or We Shall Have Cause To Cross And Impound The Payment, We Shall Release The Funds Immediately We Receive This Legal Documents.

We have decided to contact you directly to acquire the proper verifications and proof from you to show that you are the rightful person to receive this fund, because of the amount involve, we want to make sure is a clean and legal money you are about to receive. Be informed that the fund are now in United State in your name , but right now we have ask the bank not to release the fund to anybody that comes to them , unless we ask them to do so, because we have to carry out our investigations first before releasing the fund to you. Note that the fund is in the BANK OF AMERICA right now, but we have ask them not to credit the fund to you yet, because we need a solid proof and verifications from you before releasing the funds.

So to this regards you are to re-assure and proof to us that what you are about to receive is a clean money by sending to us FBI Identification Record and also Diplomatic Immunity Seal Of Transfer(DIST) to satisfy to us that the money your about to receive is legitimate and real money. You are to forward

the documents to us immediately if you have it in your possession, if you don't have it let us know so that we will direct and inform you where to obtain the document and send to us so that we will ask the bank holding the funds the Bank Of America to go ahead Crediting your account immediately.

This Documents are to be issued to you from the World Local Bank that Authorized the transfer, so get back to us immediately if you don't have the document so that we will inform you the particular place to obtain the document in United Kingdom U.K, because we have come to realize that the fund

was Authorized by H.S.B.C Bank in London.


THESE CONDITION IS VALID UNTIL 30TH OF NOVEMBER 2008 AFTER WE SHALL TAKE ACTIONS ON CANCELING THE PAYMENT AND THEN CHARGE YOU FOR ILLEGALLY MOVING FUNDS OUT OF NIGERIA .

GUARANTEE: FUNDS WILL BE RELEASED ON CONFIRMATION OF THE DOCUMENT.

Final Instruction:

60-Credit Payment Instruction: Irrevocable Credit Guarantee 61-Beneficiary Has Full Power When Validation Is Cleared 62-Beneficiaries Bank in U.S.A., Can Only Release Funds 62-Upon Confirmation From The World Bank/United Nations.
64-Bearers Must Clear Bank Protocol and Validation Request

The FBI today is providing a warning to the public against an ongoing scheme involving jury service and internet/phones fraud. The public needs to be aware that individuals identifying themselves as U.S. court employees have been telephonically contacting citizens and advising them that they have been selected for jury duty. These individuals ask to verify names and Social Security numbers then ask for credit card numbers. If the request is refused,citizens are then threatened with fines illegally.

The judicial system does not contact people telephonically and ask for personal information such as your Social Security number, date of birth or credit card numbers. If you receive one of these phone calls, do not provide any personal or confidential information to these individuals. This is an attempt to steal or to use your identity by obtaining your name, Social Security number and potentially to apply for credit or credit cards or other loans in your name. It is an attempt to defraud you. Crime and fraud is real, so be careful.

Working closely with our partners in intelligence, law enforcement, military, and diplomatic circles, the FBI’s primary responsibility is to neutralize terrorist cells and operatives here in the United States and help dismantle terrorist networks/money laundry and internet fraud worldwide. Although protecting the United States from terrorist attacks and money laundry is our first priority, we remain committed to the defense of America against foreign intelligence threats as well as the enforcement of federal criminal laws, all while respecting and defending the Constitution. If you’ve ever watched one of those crime dramas on TV and heard the term “NCIC” mentioned in passing and wondered what it was, you’re probably not alone.

NCIC, which stands for National Crime Information Center, is one of the unsung heroes of crime-fighting—little known to the public, but used every day by law enforcement officers nationwide and even across the border to take terrorists and criminals off the street, find missing persons and property, and save lives.

We’re very proud of NCIC’s legacy, but what’s most important to us is what it can do today,” says Bush. “We’re constantly trying to make it better and faster.” And we have, with a major technical upgrade in 1999 and important additions of terrorism and gang information in recent years.


Robert S. Mueller, III
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation

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Woman out $400K to 'Nigerian scam' con artists

http://www.katu.com/r?19=950&32=322...rian+scam'+con+artists&18=0.48032999237085305

Story Published: Nov 11, 2008 at 2:01 PM PST
Story Updated: Nov 13, 2008 at 5:17 PM PST

By Anna Song KATU News and KATU.com Web Staff

Video
SWEET HOME, Ore. – Janella Spears doesn’t think she’s a sucker or an easy mark.

Besides her work as a registered nurse, Spears – no relation to the well-known pop star – also teaches CPR and is a reverend who has married many couples. She also communicates with lightning-fast sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.

So how did this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman end up sending nearly half a million dollars to a bunch of con artists running what has to be one of the best-known Internet scams in the world?

Spears fell victim to the "Nigerian scam," which is familiar to almost anyone who has ever had an e-mail account.

The e-mail pitch is familiar to most people by now: a long-lost relative or desperate government official in a war-torn country needs to shuffle some funds around, say $10 million or $20 million, and if you could just help them out for a bit, you get to keep 10 (or 20 or 30) percent for your trouble.

All you need to do is send X-amount of dollars to pay some fees and all that cash will suddenly land in your checking account, putting you on Easy Street. By the way, please send the funds though an untraceable wire service.

By this time, not many people will fall for such an outrageous pitch, and the scam is very well-known. But it persists, and for a reason: every now and then, it works.

Spears received just such an e-mail, promising her that she’d get $20.5 million if she would only help out a long-lost relative – identified in the e-mail as J.B. Spears – with a little money up front. "That's what got me to believe it," Spears said.

It turned out to be a lot of money up front, but it started with just $100.
The scammers ran Spears through the whole program. They said President Bush and FBI Director "Robert Muller" (their spelling) were in on the deal and needed her help.

They sent official-looking documents and certificates from the Bank of Nigeria and even from the United Nations. Her payment was "guaranteed."
Then the amount she would get jumped up to $26.6 million – if she would just send $8,300. Spears sent the money.

More promises and teases of multi-millions followed, with each one dependent on her sending yet more money. Most of the missives were rife with misspellings.

When Spears began to doubt the scam, she got letters from the President of Nigeria, FBI Director Mueller, and President Bush. Terrorists could get the money if she did not help, Bush’s letter said. Spears continued to send funds. All the letters were fake, of course.

She wiped out her husband’s retirement account, mortgaged the house and took a lien out on the family car. Both were already paid for.
For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted.
Spears said she kept sending money because the scammers kept telling her that the next payment would be the last one, that the big money was inbound. Spears said she became obsessed with getting paid.

An undercover investigator who worked on the case said greed helped blind Spears to the reality of the situation, which he called the worst example of the scam he’s ever seen.

He also said he has seen people become obsessed with the scam before. They are so desperate to recoup their losses with the big payout, they descend into a vicious cycle of sending money in hopes the false promises will turn out to be real.

Now, Spears has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim.

She hopes her story will warn others to listen to reason and avoid going down the dark tunnel of obsession that ended up costing her so much.
Spears said it would take her at least three to four years to dig out of the debt she ran up in pursuit of the non-existent pot of Nigerian gold.

11/13/2008

On Your Side Investigator Anna Song comments:
We came across this story while attending a conference on financial crimes in Eugene. State attorneys for the Oregon Department of Justice were using this case as a teaching tool, with the name of the victim redacted. I was astonished, as many of you are, that someone could lose $400,000 in a Nigerian scam. These are the emails we all routinely get in our inbox, if our spam filter doesn’t catch them first. I inquired with the state attorneys about whether this victim would be interested in talking with me. To my surprise, she agreed.

I went to Sweet Home with a high level of skepticism. What I found was a normal, middle-class home near an elementary school, a deaf husband trying to fix his phone so that it would vibrate instead of ring, and his wife, Janella Spears, trying to get their grandkids to calm down so we could do a television interview.

Investigators with the Oregon Department of Justice initially came across Spears when they were investigating a different money laundering case. While looking at Western Union money transfers, they discovered someone had wired $144,000 to Nigeria over the course of three short weeks. It got their attention. They honed in on Spears, and did a full “money bust” at her home. After scouring her house, looking at all her financials, talking with local bank representatives and otherwise doing a complete investigation, the detectives concluded she was a victim. Remember, they also had hundreds of emails to go through, revealing her correspondence with the Nigerian scammers, and their creative stories aimed at bleeding money from her. Spears was never charged, and I have to go on the investigators’ judgment for that. For good measure, they’ve warned
Spears that if she sends any more money to Nigeria, they will charge her with a crime. She admits herself, it may be the only real deterrent for her, as fixing this became somewhat of an obsession.

Whether you believe her, Spears claims she wanted the money so she could help others in need.

The Nigerian scammers look for people like Janella Spears. Most of us have the sense to hit delete. But what about that older relative who has email, but is gullible, or easily confused? Obviously, the scam works. That’s why it continues.

Thanks to all of you who have commented.

Anna Song
Investigative Reporter / Anchor
KATU News
503.231.4207
asong@katu.com

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