Subject: HELP REQUEST
From: "MOHAMMED ABACHA" < mobach2005@ecplaza.net >
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 23:54:07 -0800

FROM: MOHAMMED ABACHA
       NIGERIA.

ATTENTION: PRESIDENT/C.E.O

Greetings,

I got your contact from a director at the Nigerian Chambers of Commerce (Foreign Trade Division) who gave me your contact from their trade catalogue. He does not however know the nature of what I want to introduce to you. I only told him a needed a foreign partner for investment purposes. I therefore decided to contact you to Assist me in the mentioned venture below. I am the second son of General Sanni Abacha, the late Military Head of State of Nigeria.

When my father was alive I used to move funds, in Cash, running into millions of United States Dollars to Brazil, Lebanon and other parts of the world, for Safe keeping on behalf of my father. However, on the eve of my father s death in June 8, 1998, he gave me the sum of US$25,400,000.00 {TWENTY-FIVE MILLION ,FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS} in cash to move to Lebanon as usual, But immediately my father died I had to move the funds to a location in Europe through a private organization. This organization is based in Europe and they offer Vault for safe keeping services to many influential and rich African leaders.

This organization is actually not listed as it is a deplomatic courier service and they have Other dealings, and as thus I am presently under oath with the secret organization, not to disclose their detail information and their operations to outsiders excepting only for the purpose of collecting my consignment. The organization is also under oath not to open the boxes in the vault for any reason at all and to protect my interest by not disclosing any information about me to any government or individual.

This not withstanding, this organization has been very good and there has not been any complains from any Quarters about the organization. The funds have been in the vault of this organization in Europe since July 1998. However, recently we received information from the organization that the Vault is now running on demurrage, and this has been very disturbing to my family, that is why I have Decided to communicate to you on behalf of my family immediately, for you to please help us by traveling as quickly as possible to secure the funds from the organization's vault.

Because of the many restrictions placed on my family by the present Nigerian Government, it has become very impossible for either me or any immediate member of my family to travel to Europe to secure the funds from the organization. I will explain my family situation to you later, if you are interested in knowing.

What I now want you to do for my family and myself are as follows:-

(1) You should travel to secure the funds in cash on my behalf and deposit it in a bank account or your bank account in your Country, pending further instructions from my family.

(2) My family will need you to please assist in settling the demurrage on the vault as soon as you arrive there.

(3) My family will be willing to give you 10% of the total $25.4 Million as your commission for your assistance. This amount is however open for negotiation if you feel that 10% will not be enough for you.

(4) As soon as you confirm to me through my email number of your readiness to assist and how quickly you can travel; I will send you a copy of my Power of Attorney which I will also send to the organization authorizing them to allow you direct access to the vault where the boxes containing the funds are deposited, so that you can secure the funds.

(5) It is very important that you understand that the organization does not know those boxes in the vault contains money. All they know is that the boxes in the vault contain art works and jewelry.

(6) As soon as you have the funds in your custody, I will give you details of where and which sector you will invest my family's share of the funds into, on our behalf, in your Country.

(7) Please note that this project is very legal and 100% risk free, because the funds in question is private family funds, which are legally deposited at the organization, but you must keep it very secret and confidential because of my personal and family security. I am attaching a picture of the consignment before they were transfered actually. Please keep this information and the picture a secret for your own and our safety as well.

Please contact me immediately, via my email, informing me the possibility of your traveling within this Month.

Waiting for your immediate response.

Best regards.

Mohammed Abacha.
Mobach@ecplaza.net

Subject: URGENT BUSINESS PROPOSAL
From: ubah ahmed < ubahahmed@zwallet.com >
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 2:11 PM

ATTN SIR,

I am barrister UBAH AHMED, a solicitor at law. I am the personal attorney to Mr. Nadeem Miya , a national of your country, who used to work with shell development company i n Nigeria and as well a one time secret agent in transfering of money overseas for the Late head of state of Nigeria {Late Gen. Sani Abacha}.

Before his death On the 21st of April 2000 {my client, his wife and their three children were involved in a car accident along Badagry Express Road in which all occupants of the motor died}. My client deposited as family belongings in a CONSIGNMENT {i.e jewelries} the sum of $26 Million in a citi security and finance company here in Nigeria and from there to citi royal exchange abroad for himself, with the hope of transferring it to his country as soon as he is on leave.

Since his death I have made several enquiries to your embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives this has also proved unsuccessful. After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to trace his last name over the Internet, to locate any m ember of his family hence I contacted you.I have contacted you to assist in repartrating this consignment which is money left behind by my client before they get confisicated or declared unknown by the security company where this huge deposits were lodged.

The Citi ExchageTrust Finance Company where the deceased had deposited this consignment has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have the consignment confisicated within the next ten official working days. Since I have been unsuccesfull in lo cating the the relatives for over 2 years now I seek your consent to present you as the next of kin of the deceased since you have the same last name so that the proceeds of this deposit valued at 26 million dollars can be handed over to you and then you and me with my two collegues can share the money. 60% to us and 40% to you.

I will manipulate the necessary legal documents that can be used to back up any claim we may make. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see that this deal went through. I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate time arran gement that will protect you from any breach of the law.Please get in touch with me by my email to enable us discuss further.

Best Regards,

BARRISTER UBAH AHMED

(I'd noticed that when I went to ebay.com and logged into my account, I had no trouble getting in, which I took as confirmation that the email was most probably a scam.)

If you receive an email like this, do not click on any of the links it contains!

I'll post a jpeg screen capture of the email, eBay's response, and then most of the text from the body of the message for search engine purposes.

It looks pretty authentic, doesn't it? It isn't. It's an attempt to get my eBay username and password. Similar versions of this scam are aimed at credit card holders, customers of banks, etc. When in doubt, contact the named institution to see whether the email is really from them (it probably isn't).

The response from eBay is probably a form letter, which I think is reasonable since they probably have to deal with a lot of this. Here it is:

RESPONSE:

Hello,

Thank you for writing to eBay regarding the email message you received that appeared to be from eBay.

I have reviewed your account and do not see any active suspensions on your account. I can assure you that your account is not suspended or on hold. If you are experiencing problems signing in, we may be able to provide additional assistance to pinpoint the problem. In most cases, you can request a new password for your account to regain access to it. In addition, you can contact us by clicking on the help link at the top of all eBay pages and selecting the "contact us" link.

If you are not writing from the email address of the eBay account in question, please provide us with the User ID of that account to help us resolve your sign-in issues.

If you received an email message stating your account was suspended, it is most likely a fake email. We advise you to be very cautious of email messages that ask you to submit information such as your credit card number or your email password. eBay will never ask you for sensitive personal information such as passwords, bank account or credit card numbers, Personal Identification Numbers (PINs), or Social Security Numbers in an email.

Since you have received a spoofed email, your email address has most likely been collected by a fraudulent source. As a result, you may continue to receive spoofed emails for some time as these groups move from Website to Website setting up fraudulent email addresses, fake eBay Web pages and sending fraudulent emails.

We are committed to the security of the eBay site and our members. We review every report we receive and forward all vital information to the appropriate authorities for further action and tracking. We work actively and aggressively in partnership with many agencies, ISP's and law enforcement groups to support their investigation of these fraudulent entities. As a public company, we rely on the same agencies you do to pursue these fraudulent activities.

If you have any doubt about whether an email message is from eBay, please forward it immediately to spoof@ebay.com. Do not respond to it or click on any of the links in the email message. Please do not change the subject line or edit the email in any way when you forward it to eBay.

If you have already entered sensitive information as mentioned above, you should take immediate action to protect your identity and online accounts. We have developed an eBay help page with valuable information regarding the steps you should take to protect yourself.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/isgw-account-theft-reporting.html

We have enacted several preventative measures and increased information on the eBay help pages to help educate our members to spot fake emails. We would also encourage you to take this opportunity to learn more about spoof emails. To access our Security Center please see the following Web page:

http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter/index.html

Once again, thank you for alerting us to the spoofed email you received. Your efforts help us ensure that eBay remains a safe and vibrant online marketplace.

Regards,
Ande
eBay SafeHarbor
Investigations Team

Here's the scam email body text again to make the content searchable:

BODY TEXT:

Dear eBay User,

We regret to inform you, that we had to block your eBay account because we have been notified that your account may have been compromised by outside parties.

Our terms and conditions you agreed to state that your account must always be under your control or those you designate at all times. We have noticed some activity related to your account that indicates that other parties may have access and or control of your information in your account.

Please be aware that until we can verify your identity no further access to your account will be allowed.As a result,Your access to bid or buy on eBay has been restricted.To start using your eBay account fully,Please uptake and verify your information by clicking below

http://signin.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?Verify

Regards,

eBay Member Service

**Please Do Not Reply To This E-mail As You Will Not Receive A Response**