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SAN JOSE (CBS SF) — A San Jose woman bilked out of $500,000 by a Nigerian scam artist on a dating website luckily recovered $200,000 from a bank in Turkey, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. The case of the 66-year-old woman conned out of her money through a meeting on ChristianMingle.com should serve as a warning about fraud schemes on international dating sites, Deputy District Attorney Cherie Bourland said. “You get the love drug in you and you end up getting duped,” Bourland said. The victim, a divorcee, joined ChristianMingle and befriended a Nigerian man who...

At a well-received “Welcome Home” speech in Houston on Monday night, Sen. Ted Cruz managed to find a silver lining in the problems with the Affordable Care Act exchange website. “You may have noticed that all the Nigerian email scammers have become a lot less active lately,” Cruz joked, according to the Houston Chronicle. “They all have been hired to run the Obamacare website.” Cruz was speaking to a tea party crowd filling the headquarters of the King Street Patriots in his hometown Monday night, and he said it was good to be back. “I’ve spent the past month in...

I answered an ad in the Kentucky website used by my town for free classifieds. It listed my town in central KY as the location. The ad was for the truck described below for $3,000. But look at the response I got back below. Is it a twist on the Nigerian scam. Your thoughts? (some information redacted) -------------------------------- Hey, This is XXXXX. I received your email about my 1999 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Z71 4X4. The truck is in great shape. It was always garaged and never smoked in. It has minor scratches, normal for the age. No mechanical or electrical...

The former treasurer of Goochland County, Va., who has pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $200,000 in public funds, funneled the money to a shadowy figure in Nigeria, according to a Virginia state audit released Monday and the prosecutor in the case. Brenda Grubbs was arrested on Feb. 2 for attempted embezzlement and effectively resigned her position on Feb. 11. She pleaded guilty to a 20-count indictment earlier this month. Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 13, and she faces life in prison. The audit, conducted by the state Auditor of Public Accounts, said Grubbs stole the money through a series of...

Subject: Terrible Trip......Jxxxx XXXXXXXX From: Jxxxxxxx Date: Monday To: undisclosed recipients: ; I'm writing this with tears in my eyes,I came down to London England for a short vacation and i was mugged at gun point last night,all cash,credit cards and cell were stolen off,It was so scary just happy I still have my life and passport. I've been to the embassy and the Police here thank God they are really helping with a return flight and our fight leaves in few hours from now,but we are only having problems settling our hotel bills before leaving I need you to...

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Most people don't fall for the African inheritance scam where a huge sum of money sits in a foreign bank account waiting to be claimed -- but at a price. But some do. Nine people, including several from the Cleveland area, sued a Solon woman and two lawyers this week claiming they duped the plaintiffs into helping the woman recover $14.5 million left behind in the African nation of Burkina Faso. The lawsuit, filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, claims Willia Burton and two attorneys from Baker Hostetler in Cleveland persuaded the plaintiffs to give her...

The Securities Investor Protection Corp web site has an apparent imposter, i-sipc.com soliciting Madoff victims. A Nigerian scam sought to steal their personal info claiming they had $1.3 million in Madoff money stashed in Malaysia. Burned investors were urged to mail in their "most recent brokerage account statement." The shady group claimed to be based in Geneva, with ties to the UN and IMF but a search of the domain name showed Victor Oladipo, Nigeria, created the site last August.

Anti-Terrorist And Monetary Crimes Division FBI Headquarters In Washington, D.C. Federal Bureau Of Investigation J. Edgar Hoover Building 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001 Attn: Beneficiary, This is to officially inform you that it has come to our notice and we have thoroughly completed an Investigation with the help of our Intelligence Monitoring Network System that you legally won the sum of $3,200,000 USD from a Lottery Company outside your country. During our investigation we discovered that your e-mail won the money from an Online Balloting System and we have authorized this winning to be paid to you via...

Some person named "Azul Ajan" sent this to me: Dear Friend, First, I must solicit your confidence in this transaction.This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly CONFIDENTIAL AND TOP SECRET. However after series of petition was recieved by this present cregime from foreign contractors and inability of the BANK OF AFRICA to fulfill their obligation for the payment to its foreign creditors, in conjunction with the council of ministers, they mandated us to carry out a careful and comprehensive review of all overdue payments to foreign contractors and to effect payments immediately. During the above mentioned process,...

Woman out $400K to 'Nigerian scam' con artists  Story Updated: Nov 11, 2008 at 9:07 PM PST By Anna Song KATU News and KATU.com Web Staff SWEET HOME, Ore. – Janella Spears doesn’t think she’s a sucker or an easy mark. Besides her work as a nursing administrator, 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...

LAGOS - Nigeria's anti-corruption police were questioning the head of the stock exchange after she organised a gala dinner in support of Barack Obama's U.S. presidential campaign which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Revenge is sweet — and thanks to tattoo ink, sometimes permanent — for a growing legion of "scambaiters" who have taken it upon themselves to punish the thieves behind those Nigerian e-mail scams. Posting their exploits online, scambaiters are turning the tables on the scam artists, conning the cons who have bilked unsuspecting people out of countless millions of dollars in a common scam referred to as the "419 scam" or advance-fee fraud. Typically, scammers start an e-mail relationship and get their victims to send money to people who claim to be dying or who need help to free a...

Why Hillary should go to White House Thursday, 17th January, 2008 Hillary speaks at her New Hampshire presidential primary election rally By Rose Namayanja THE 2008 presidential race in America is a major test for democracy in that country. If he scoops it, Barack Hussein Obama will be the first black president. Likewise, Hillary Rodham Clinton would be the first woman president. Both options are history making. If the mid-term elections where the Democrats attained majority in Congress are to be a precursor to the presidential elections, then Democrats stand a chance to regain the White House. I’m an ardent...

A Queensland family has been fleeced of more than $1.3 million in an elaborate variation of a scam that persuades people to part with large sums of money so they can retrieve an overseas inheritance, police say. The fraud has become known as the Nigerian 419 scam. Steven Baker, a member of the Queensland family who lost up to $1.5 million, has told police he was approached by a friend who believed her father, whom she had never met, had left a $US17 million ($20.38 million) estate when he passed away. He said the woman had never met her father,...

SELMER, Tenn. (AP) _ Bank tellers testified Saturday that a preacher's wife accused of murdering her husband was in financial trouble and that the bank had caught her trying to deposit bad checks. Prosecutors said the Winklers' bank account at Regions Bank in Selmer was overdrawn by $5,000, and that bank employees called Mary Winkler several times in the days before her husband's death. Diane Hollingsworth, a teller at Regions Bank, said she talked with Mary Winkler on March 21, 2006 _ one day before Matthew Winkler was found shot to death in the church parsonage in this west Tennessee...

SELMER, Tennessee -- A preacher's wife told authorities she shot her husband after a long buildup of domestic problems, according to an audiotape that prosecutors played Friday at her murder trial. SNIP Investigators have said she admitted shooting her husband on March 22, 2006, and that it had something to do with his constant criticism. On the tape, she says the couple's domestic problems had reached a boiling point after many years of conflict. "It's just a lot of stupid stuff," she said. "I love him dearly, but gosh, he just nailed me in the ground. ... The first of...

From Ms Helen Nana Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire West Africa. (URGENT ASSISTANCE NEEDED) NB/ Please reply me direct through my private email address (helennana225@yahoo.es) Dearest One. Good a thing to write you. I have a proposal for you-this however is not mandatory nor will in any manner compel you to honour against your will. I am Helen Nana, 21 years old and the only Daughter of my late parents Mr.and Mrs Nana. My father was a highly reputable busnness magnet-(a cocoa merchant)who operated in the capital city of Ivory coast during his days. It is sad to say that he passed...

I received the following electronic epistle just exactly as you see it... pathetic grammar, formatting, and all. ®BMW MOTOR NOTIFICATION BMW COMPANY UK®. An Affiliate of Bmw Uk. 28 TANFIELD ROAD, LONDON, UK. Sir/Madam, We are pleased to inform you of the release, of the long awaited results of the BMW CAR INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION PROGRAM held on the 11TH october, 2006.You were entered as dependent clients with: Reference Number BMW:2551256003/23 and Secret pin code x7pwyz2006 and. Your email address attached to the ticket number: 2752246896 that drew the lucky winning number, which consequently won the sweepstake in the first category,in...

Like a lot of the women on dating Web sites, Lynn divorcee Carol Cormier was looking for love. What she found turned out to be too good to be true, and now she’s on a mission to save other singles from being ensnared in a shockingly widespread online romance scam. “The only thing I tell them is you opened up your heart and a jerk fell in,” said Cormier, 57, who almost lost thousands to a Nigerian who used a phony model’s photo to woo her and then tried to bilk her out of her savings. Cormier says she’s one...

Dear friend, Let me start to introduce myself. I am Captain Brian James of the US marine force currently serving in Iraq. My troops were deployed here in Iraq since the starting of the war, though I have visited home trice since then. Just last week Friday 19th May, 2006 we received an urgent call from Baghdad that some terrorists were camping there and my troops were sent there to forestall their activities. On perceiving our presence, they first opened attack on us. There was nothing we could do rather than returning fire. We were really under heavy fire. Finally,...