Warning: Hong Kong - The New Nigerian Scam Source?
Written by Michael Salsbury
Monday, 03 October 2005
I've had friends and co-workers in the past ask me about messages like the one I'm going to quote later in this article, asking me if it could possibly be legitimate. The answer is a clear, definitive, NO! But it's important for me to share how I reach that conclusion so that if you receive a message like this in the future, you'll know how to gauge its reality for yourself.
The letter quoted below is that of a spamming scam artist. The scammer is usually someone in a third-world country who doesn't have a lot of money but can get access to a computer on the Internet. They write letters like these to every email address they can get, hoping that just a few of the people receiving the letter will write back, so that they can make a few bucks off them. Just how they'll make the money will be covered near the end of this article. First, let's look at the opening letter.
Here's an email I received just this morning (go ahead and read it because it will help you understand the rest of this article, in which I analyze all the reasons why you can see this is a scam):
MR.CHEUNG PUI. email :()
Dear Friend,
Let me start by introducing myself. I am Mr. Cheung Pui director of operations of the Hang Seng Bank Ltd,Hong kong. I have an obscured business suggestion for you.Before the U.S and Iraqi war, our client Major Fadi Basem who was with the Iraqi forces and also business man made a numbered,fixed deposit for 18 calendar months, with a value of Twenty Four million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars only in my branch.
Upon maturity several notice was sent to him,even during the war early last year.Again after the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him. We later find out that the Major and his family had been killed during the war in bomb blast that hit their home.After further investigation it was also discovered that Major Fadi Basem did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper workof his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank.So,Twenty Four million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars is still lyingin my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim it. What bothers me most is that according to the laws of my country, at the expiration 4 years the funds will revert to the ownership of the Hong Kong Government if nobody applies to claim the funds.
Against this backdrop,my suggestion to you is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to Major Fadi Basem so that you will be able to receive his funds.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE:
I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we shall come out successful. I have contacted anattorney that will prepare the necessary document that will back you up as the next of kin to Major Fadi Basem , all that is required from you at this stage is for you to provide me with your Full Names and Address so that the attorney can commence his job.
After you have been made the next of kin, the attorney will also fill in for claims on your behalf and secure the necessary approval and letter of probate in your favor for the move of the funds to an account that will be provided by you.
There is no risk involved at all in the matter as we are going adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents. Please endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this issue.Once the funds have been transferred to your nominated bank account we shall share in the ratio of 70% for me, 30% for you .Should you be interested please send me your full names and current residential address and I will prefer you to reach me on the email address below;
Email:()
Finally, after that i shall provide you with more details of this operation.
Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Mr. Cheung Pui
Let's assume for a moment that I'm gullible and I believe that this email is genuine, that a Mr. Cheung Pui, operations manager of an important Hong Kong Bank, wants to share with me (a random stranger) a great sum of money that is going to sit unused in his bank (unless I claim it) until the Hong Kong government takes it away. But let's say I'm not completely stupid, and I decide to check this out. What would I do and what would I learn?
Let's start by doing something simple, a Google search for the "Hang Seng Bank" in Hong Kong. After all, if it's a real bank, it ought to have a real web site. Sure enough, it does. Google points me to http://www.hangseng.com/ which looks like a legitimate bank site, as near as I can tell. However, searching within the site and looking at its "About Us" page, I can't find any reference of a Mr. Cheung Pui. While that should look a little suspicious, I am pretty sure my own name doesn't appear on my employer's web site anywhere, so why would this guy's name show up on his (though as a manager you'd think it might)?
How about we Google the man himself. If he's legit, we might find some references to him and his bank. I Google the string "Cheung Pui Hang Seng Bank". Well, well, well... What is all this? It seems there are a number of Internet scam sites who've heard of this guy and his supposed Iraqi money. That ought to be enough to tip me off right away and make me delete the email.
But I didn't even have to use Google to see that this email was pretty fishy to start with. Consider the following "strangeness" in the letter.
Early on, Mr. Cheung Pui tells us "he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank". If that were really true, why, then, would he also tell us "Upon maturity several notice was sent to him, even during the war early last year. Again after the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him." Obviously, the bank knows whose money this is. Clearly, if notices did go out, those are sitting somewhere in Iraq that his legitimate relatives (if any) could find and that the Iraqui government (or the U.S. government) could certainly find when they show up in the mail. So the idea that no one besides our man Mr. Pui knows about this deposit is absurd. That should be one clue that there's a problem here.
Notice that the email originates from an address given as "" while the address he wants us to respond to is "". Both of these are most likely free email addresses. While it's true that many "normal people" have such addresses, you have to wonder why he'd send from one address and ask us to reply to another. That ought to sound pretty suspicious.
Notice that this email isn't addressed to me personally, but to the much more generic "Dear Friend". This should tip us off right away that this guy's emailing this message to a ton of people whose names he can't even be bothered to figure out. Just how many 24 million dollar accounts did that Iraqi major leave behind?
Consider also what Mr. Pui is asking us to do. First, he wants us to impersonate a family member of a dead Iraqi officer. Second, he claims to have enlisted the aid of an attorney who will create (false) paperwork asserting that we're the person we're pretending to be. Then, he'll split some huge sum of money with us, giving us 30% of it, out of the goodness of his heart. And somehow he thinks that "There is no risk involved at all in the matter" which involves fraud, forgery, and grand theft.
Then consider, too, that our Mr. Pui claims to be an operations manager at a bank. If he's that high up in the organization, how is it possible that in a country as widely visited as Hong Kong that he doesn't know a single foreigner he can trust right there in his own country? Why would he need to solicit a total stranger for this?
So What WOULD HAVE HAPPENED Had I Responded?
This is a classic "Nigerian Scam" except that it's coming from Hong Kong (presumably) this time around. In the classic Nigerian Scam, the sequence of events goes something like the following:
You receive a letter like the one quoted here.
Greed in your mind, you respond to the letter and tell the scammer that you'd like to help him get his millions.
The scammer tells you he needs some money to pay the attorney to make the fake documents naming you the heir to the millions.
You pay the money, since you are going to be rich later.
The scammer tells you he needs your bank account information.
At this point you probably get suspicious and don't offer the information. He tells you that he can set up an account for you in his country if you send the opening deposit money.
You send the deposit money.
This kind of thing keeps going on until you get frustrated and stop sending money or until you seem to be getting wise to the scammer and he disappears with all the cash you've sent him.
And no, you never see a nickel of the money he's promised you.
So by this point you should be feeling really disappointed in yourself that you might actually for a moment have believed this email was legitimate.
But What if it WAS Legitimate?
OK, let's assume I'm completely nuts and totally wrong about this. (And if I am, so are dozens of Internet fraud/hoax/scam warning sites out there! What are the odds of that?) Let's say this guy is totally for real and needs us to help him get rich.
What would we have to do, realistically? Certainly, we'll need that attorney of his to draw up some legal documents that make us look like the sole heir to the Iraqi's money. Assuming we can find an attorney who will forge that paperwork and get it approved by the right crooked government officials, we're now guilty of fraud, bribery, and conspiracy. That attorney won't come cheap, because he knows he's making you two very rich and that he's risking prison himself.
Now, we'd REALISTICALLY have to go to the bank in person to claim this money. I doubt they're going to turn over $24 million to Mr. Pui without us being there, with our identification showing that we own this money. Even then, it's unlikely they'll release it immediately. So we're going to need a passport and visa to visit Hong Kong, plus shell out some cash for tickets and a hotel stay.
Imagine that the bank buys our phony story and documents. They turn over the money to us. Mr. Pui takes his 70% and deposits it (because no one's going to carry around millions in cash - unless they're really dumb). His government's going to want to know where he got all that money, since he's little more than a bank operations manager. They're going to suspect that he stole it. He'll tell them he got it from you, a rich millionaire. They'll look at their records and see that you withdrew your $24 million and gave 70% of it to him. Won't that look a bit suspicious? They'll probably start checking your credentials a lot more closely. What are the odds that they won't see through the crooked lawyer's phony documents claiming you're the sole heir to this fortune, a fortune that (Mr. Pui tells us) they'd be claiming in about 4 years?
Very likely, you'll end up in a Hong Kong prison for fraud, theft, forgery, and any other law they can apply to you. You'll spend the rest of your short life in jail and more broke than you are today.
Thus, even if this was legitimate, which it isn't, you'd still be breaking a number of international and local laws. You'd also be quite easy to catch breaking those laws, so conviction would be pretty much guaranteed, as would encarceration.
So What Should I Do?
My advice is to delete such mails as soon as you get them. I wouldn't bother to read them other than for amusement, and I definitely wouldn't respond to them. But I would feel free to post the scammer's email addresses everywhere I could (which is why they're on this page) so that they'll get so much other spam that they won't find it easy to locate the messages from their potential victims.
I also suggest making very sure that your family and friends learn about these "Nigerian Scams" and that they never fall victim. There are too many stories about there about gullible people losing their life savings to jerks like these, and I personally don't want my friends or family members (or you) to be among them.
