Daijiworld News Network
July 7: You must be flooded with hundreds of spam messages every day. Though email hosts are trying to reduce the spam messages, no one has ever been able to completely stop the spams.
In the similar line, you must also be flooded with several emails from unknown people from African countries or UK or other western countries, where people are claiming to a missionary, or member of royal family or retired excecutives of big companies asking for investment of money or to get the benefit from them 'without' investing anything!
Recently many e-Scams have come to light whereby a number of innocent people have become victims of such scams
To alert our readers so that they stay away from responding to such messages, we are re-producing an article that appeared in 'Mumbai Mirror', a leading Mumbai daily of Times of group.
We are sure this will help many of our readers to know the shady background of these anonymous which offer attractive packages and cash!
Delhi woman duped of Rs 3 lac by Nigerians
- The foreigners, operating from Mumbai, sought the money offering to hire her as the caretaker of a church they were planning to set up in India.
A Delhi housewife mortgaged her jewellery and her car to secure the job of a caretaker of the Indian-branch of a UK-based Christian missionary organization, only to learn six months later that she had been duped of Rs 1.5 crore. Pursuing the Nigerians who cheated her, she landed in Mumbai, where she found them behind bars. But there seems to be little hope of recovering her money.
Snehalata
Snehlata Sehgal, 40, received an e-mail in June last year from a Nigerian who introduced himself as Dr James Biso. He claimed to be a missionary, who wanted to set up a church in India, for which he needed a caretaker, who would be paid $320,500 (Rs 1.5 crore).
When Sehgal evinced interest in the position, Biso sent her another mail in July 2005 asking her to pay Rs 1 lac as processing fees.
"In the second week of July, I came to Mumbai and met a man named Kama at the Fariyas Hotel near Chowpatty. I issued him a cheque for Rs 50,000. He asked for another Rs 50,000, but I could not withdraw more than Rs 15,000 from my ATM," Sehgal said.
Kama then handed over a letter authorizing Sehgal as the caretaker of the project. Later, the same evening he called her up and asked for Rs two lac towards a trip to London for training.
Jennifer D`Silva
"Initially, I was shocked but when they sent me a letter with the picture of their Home Minister embossed, I convinced my husband that as we had already invested some money, to take another chance. We mortgaged some of my jewellery and gave our car on hire to collect the amount," Sehgal said.
Sehgal then visited Mumbai again in August 2005 and paid the sum to Jennifer D'Silva and her husband Jelf Diso in Bhayendar. Later in the month, she paid out another Rs 50,000.
However, the Nigerians soon stopped answering Sehgal's calls. A worried Sehgal came to Bhayandar in December 2005 to seek a refund but couldn't trace the Nigerians. D'Silva refused to acknowledge her.
Finally in June 2006, she met Deputy Commissioner Shashikant Shinde.
"I had lodged a complaint with the Bhayandar police and kept making rounds of Mumbai.
"Last month, I met Commissioner Shinde, who showed me the passports of some arrested Nigerians and I identified the people who had duped me. But my money has not yet been refunded," Sehgal said.