Is this a Nigerian Scam???

[JJ]

Dear All,

Below is a copy of an e-mail I have just recieved, it is the second one from the same e-mail address, has anyone else got the same, is it one of those Nigerian Scams that I have read about on this forum earlier this summer, or am I just being synical?

The reason I am so suspicious is that the first mail was addressed to undisclosed recipients.

Many thanks

Hello,
Thanks so much for the mail Could you kindly
let me know if you can get us room for
3 couples. we are staying for 3 weeks. we will be
having our anual business conference which will be
starting by october.
The conference starts by 26 october
but the scheduled arrival date is 25th, a day before
the conference.We will be staying 3weeks for the
conference and will be leaving by 15 November.
we shall  make all  payment sort out before our arrival and
the total amount due for payment is required. Payment
will be sent to you by our sponsoring company for the
trip.
Kindly let me know if you can make reservation for us do let me know
the total charges for the reservation.
Looking forward to hear from you
Thanks
C. Williams

[Hoddy]

If this does turn out to be genuine please will you let us all know what kind of a business they are in ?

It must be a pretty wonderful one if they can afford to take three weeks off for a conference.

Hoddy

[Iceni]

Why not calculate yr normal rates, add 200%, ask for an EUR draft drawn on a first class French bank and wait to see what happens. If nothing then you have lost nothing. If the draft arrives and clears than you have won and you can treat the space as booked. IF, as I suspect, they ask for a refund tell them it is not refundable !!

John

not

[Dick Smith]

It would also be interesting to know in which local venue they are holding this marathon.

I don't think there is any chance at all that this is genuine, and the next step will be to send you a huge money order and ask you to send them back the difference.

[SC]

Here's one that we got recently, he didn't even hide the cc's, and it was sent to a couple of dozen other owners from Brittany to Provence.

"Greeting,

       Am Jose Thompson i have been trying to locate at least one owner of a nice villa or Apartment thati can rent any way,

       Dear Mr or Mrs, Am contacting you on behalf of the Villa or shuold i say house for rents that was placed on the vacation home rental web site,I am Jose Thompson from Brooklyn but we stays in here in the Great Britain for our business to be in progress.

        I am Interested in renting your villa /Apartment that you havefor rents i will await your mail for further details ok. in which i will be checking in and checking out in the dates below.

Dec 1st 2005 checking in

Dec 31st 2007 Chacking out:

Or Rather Dec 1st 2005 Checinking in:

Jan 31st 2006 Cheking out:"

 

Return address was a yahoo.it mail account.

 

sc

[Lori]

JJ - yours sounds very similar to one we received about 7 months ago.  Slightly different story, but totally odd.  I just told them the exact full payment in Euros would need to be received 8 weeks prior to arrival - no foreign currency checks and NO refunds whatsoever.  I also asked several questions about his "story" stating that I found it hard to "understand" rather than believe.

I never heard from him again.  I was sure it was not a genuine inquiry - and even if it was, I was prepared to lose it.

Go with your instincts.

[Quillan]

We just calculate it out send a letter by email along with a PayPal invoice for the full amount. If it is genuine they will pay via PayPal if not you will never hear from them again and you just cancel the PayPal invoice. You can also send a booking confimation with a bit at the bottom saying "We are happy to give full refunds on cancelations and over payments 60 days after notification". That should do the trick, plenty of time to see that the cheque does not bounce or that it's forged.

[JJ]

Dear All,

Many thanks for your comments. Go with your instincts is always a good idea, if something seems to good too be true, then there is normally a catch.

My concern is that someone, somewhere may be taken in by these people.

If I believed everything I got through my e-mail I would now be a multi millionaire and have a very long sexual organ, neither of which are true of course.

Regards,

[woods2]

Very similar to what I received recently.  I played the idiot along and received a draft drawn on an Irish bank.  A quick phone call to the bank revealed that it was forged.  The Nigerian scams seem to have hit gite owners in France very hard this year.  The downside for the Nigerians is that I'm not racist by nature, but seem to have good reason to change!

Mike

[Ty Korrigan]

Sorry, where is the scam? are you being asked to pay out money? or are mythical Negroes booking French holidays and then what?

Please explain the scam to me...

[JJ]

Ty,

The scam has not yet taken place, what is suspected is that these people seduce you with a booking that sounds too good to be true. They then send you a worthless cheque or money order for the full amount, then, after you have paid the cheque into your account they cancel, asking for a full refund, which you give them from your account, before their worthless cheque has been processed.

Alternatively they send you a large cheque or money order worth more that the booking and ask you to refund the difference.

There has been quite a bit of discussion about these scams on the gite owners forum during the summer. They have beeen labelled as Nigerian Scams as they seem to eminate from that particular country.

They are on a par with the many other e-mail scams like when you get informed that you have won 1.5 million euros in a lottery etc etc

Hope this helps

 

[lizzy h]

Yes it is a scam I have recieved several of these type scams and its not worth wasting your time on them ,I have recieved the same enquiry today  and just deleted it , it was though a good rentals website and I have forwarded it into the admin today.

you wiill get a few of them in this line of work , hazard of the job I'm afraid!

 

[Ty Korrigan]

Gits! I imagine the likes of 'oh will you cut my lawn/hedge and I shall over pay you but ca you give me difference in dollars...'

Well eat 3mm brushcutter line in the chops you Nigerian types! I am mowing you guys down to a number one cut, then sending you the bill for the decheterie!

Thats before the Glyphoste...

[alnmike]

What happens (and this is also true about cars,motorbikes and boats)is that you agree a price for the item, and the cheque payment you receive turns out to be more. You are then asked to send the balance to a hire car /shipping/storage company.Being prudent you wait for 5 working days and your bank say that the cheque has cleared. you send off the refund and your cheque gets cashed. THEN your bank say ooppss - cheque has bounced, you're overdrawn. Reason for delay is usually it is foreign check/account. Hence a statement saying 'refunds after 60 days' is spot on. For us the email was very poor english (mind you so's toh's) and asking for a months rent.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Similar scams have been around for many years, even before the event of email. In the oil industry we used to know them as 4-1-9 scams in reference to the section of the Nigerian penal code that covered such fraudulant activities. We used to get characters turning up unannounced at the office with a bundle of oil export certificates from the Nigerian state oil concern NNPC and a tale of woe about the untold riches that awaited if only 20000 bucks or so could be found to expidite the necessary stamping & sealing. People used to fall for it too. (No names, no pack-drill: they know who they are. Hee Hee Hee!)

Once this pot was exhausted the scammers moved on to other potential sources of income so I guess its the turn of the poor hard working gite owner to support the BMW dealerships of Lagos. A fair amount also comes out of Eastern Europe and even Old Blighty (anyone remember the incident with Lord thingy in Fawlty Towers? They always came across like that.) There is a website called something like 419 Eater that gives some entertaining detail on this sort of activity.