Did he give out any banking details to email correspondents, ostensibly to facilitate funds transfers or such (just not the ones he was expecting)?
Recently, I've received several emails offering easy and lucrative part-time work, such as this one from "Dr Steve Bruce":
I would be very interested in offering you a part-time paying job in which you could earn up to $7,000 a month as extra income. opening an account would have been my best choice if I was not working on a deadline that must meet a 24 hour turn around time,other options are not on my side due to time, money, and requirements.JOB DESCRIPTION: Work as my payment assistant in charge of collecting and processing the payments from the associates. 1. Receive payment (checks) from my Clients 2. Cash the Payments at your Bank 3. Deduct 10%, which will be your percentage/pay on Payment processed. 4. You will then forward the balance via Western Union Money Transfer according to my instruction.
REQUIREMENT:
18 years or older. Responsible, Reliable and Trustworthy Available to work a minimum 3-4 hours per week. Able to check and respond to emails often. Easy telephone access.
IS THIS LEGAL? YES It is very legal, Doing this job is 100% safe and legal. I would be glad if you accept my proposal for an opportunity to make up 10% of each transaction completed.
HAVE YOU HANDLED LARGE FUNDS, HOW MUCH AND HOW SUCCESSFULLY?
Please reply via email with complete information as requested: A. NAME: B. STREET ADDRESS (NOT P.O BOX): C. CITY: D. STATE: E. ZIP CODE: F. COUNTRY: G. MOBILE NUMBER: H. AGE: I. SEX: J. OCCUPATION: K. E MAIL:
In at least one case, the sender's IP was in Lagos.
The way it works is, you get a large cashier's check
. You keep
your 10% commission and send the other 90% via Western Union as instructed. Then, when the cashier's check bounces a couple of days later, you are hosed, since money sent via Western Union is virtually untraceable and impossible to recover.
BIG ASS MISTAKE. Next thing I knew a few charges piled up on an Amazon-like product ordering board. AMEX Fraud department to their credit caught the transactions as they happened and stopped them (probably because of the shipping address). They cancelled the card and issued me a new one pronto.....they know their stuff....been with them since 1981 and never got caught on anything except this and this was a dumbass error I WILL NOT REPEAT AGAIN.
No. He was out of the country. But he does use a wireless connection that, I'm betting, isn't encrypted at home. And he does some banking online. I told him to get that puppy hardwired.
He was told that "he" requested 2 ATM cards and they were used to transfer funds to an account in Pennsylvania. He's lived in NJ for 30 years. He left the country the 21st. He was ripped off the 25th. The bank is going to reimburse but now he's afraid and no one is giving him pointers on how to avoid having it happen again. Also his accounts are closed and he can't get at his own funds until new accounts are processed. They said about a week.