# A scam-story



## peter i (Jan 12, 2009)

Some time ago I was contacted by a young man. (Or more correctly, he contacted the department of chemistry, and weird requests quite often end up at my table)

He wanted to "know something about gold" but was not really willing to tell me why. He just needed a "quick method for the non-chemist to test the fineness of gold".
It took a little interrogation to make him tell the whole story.

He happened to know an African gentleman, who had contacts in Africa that could sell placer gold.... quite a bit under spot! He had seen (African) test documents proving the quality.

This was where my alarms went off, all of them!
I told him quite clearly, that these three terms
-Africa
-Gold
-"make a lot of money"
Just stank of a scam. But he insisted that his contact was an honest man.


I then told him, that the only way he should ever buy gold like that, was if it was cast in a bar, that he himself drilled a sample from it, then locked it in a bank box where only he had access and had the drillings tested.
If that test was OK, he could consider buying, but no one should be allowed to touch the gold after he had sampled it.
(He still didn't believe me)
I sent him on to a metal dealer I know, that I knew would say exactly the same. 

Half a year ago I met this dealer again, and we naturally had the usual chat about metal. He then told about a young guy who had contacted him (well, you know who), he had warned him, but the young man had loaned approx. $ 100.000 and gone on safari (I wonder what he told the bank? But before the crisis they were rather indiscriminate).

They drove quite deep into nothing, met the people with the gold, he paid the money, got the gold... and on the way back, highwaymen with Kalashnikovs were (not surprisingly) waiting .

I have no doubt it was a scam from end to end, but nothing can be proved.
The young man probably learned something, but it was a rather expensive lesson.


Just thought I'd share the story with you, I believe we have seen a couple of scammers banned from this forum already.

Gold and greed are sisters, and the greedy are often fooled by people who are smarter and greedier.


----------



## patnor1011 (Jan 12, 2009)

Have quite same story... An old man /72/ from czech got letter one of so called nigerian letters about some investment. He took money out of the bank, motgaged home, got every loan possible and put some serious money together. Something in region of 500-600.000$. He gave them money and then he didnt hear from them. He went to nigerian embassy. He was told by staff that this is so common form of scam and that they cant really do nothing for him. He continue to call them he went there few times and he even meet with ambassador. He was old and he thought that embassy is somehow responsible for what these nigerians did to him so he keeps putting pressure to staff there. They contacted police and even went to court to get him barred from intimidating them. That was on daily basis like. He suddenly stopped. After few days he come back to ambassador again. This time with gun. He shot him dead and wounded receptionist. 20.02.2003.


----------



## Lou (Jan 12, 2009)

Wow! Patnor and Peter those are both some stories!


I've always been wary of something that is too good to be true, for oft it is!

You did the right thing warning that fellow Peter, but some people won't listen and see only facts that have been distorted by their ambition and hope.


One would think that with all the oil Nigeria has, more of it would get to its people so that they would have little need to scam others. 


Lou


----------



## butcher (Jan 13, 2009)

probably too many greedy people or goverment.


----------



## Palladium (Jan 14, 2009)

I use to talk to a lot of people on a daily basis before i got sick and retired for a little while. You would not belive some of the conservations i use to have with people who didn't have a clue, but yet was willing to make a blind leap of faith and trust people with large amounts of money. I like to get me a scammer every now and then and play games with them. It's sort of a hobby i enjoy. The old cat and string trick.

Since gold and precious metals prices rose it's been a feeding frenzy to say the very least. The suckers are out there. I got a phone call from a gentlemen just last week who had a new process for refining gold. Inventor i think he said he was. He wanted me to look it over and give him my advice and invest in the new process. We are all going to be millionaires he says. Yeahhhhhhhh, let me get right on that for you there buddy. :twisted: :twisted:


----------



## peter i (Jan 15, 2009)

There seems to some common traits to the scams.

- "Get rich quick"
- "Not entirely legal, not your money... but noone will ever know"
- "make the victim believe he's lucky"
- "make the risk appear to be comparatively small. $1000 is not much compared to making a million"
- "make the victim believe he's in control and is smarter than the scammer"

To quote W.C. Fields



> "You can't cheat an honest man."


----------



## Harold_V (Jan 15, 2009)

peter i said:


> To quote W.C. Fields
> 
> 
> 
> > "You can't cheat an honest man."


Heh!

Have you tried to reason with a person that is hell bent on falling for a scam? Somehow, everything that is logical to the normal person suddenly makes no sense to the victim-------he generally buys the story entirely, and is shocked when the truth is disclosed. 

An elderly friend, now deceased, informed me that he couldn't be away from home during a given period of time because he had it on good authority that someone in his town was going to win the Publisher's Clearing House magazine scam. He was quite sure it would be him, considering he had subscribed to an insane number of their magazines. 

<sigh>

Harold


----------



## peter i (Jan 15, 2009)

Harold_V said:


> Have you tried to reason with a person that is hell bent on falling for a scam? Somehow, everything that is logical to the normal person suddenly makes no sense to the victim-------he generally buys the story entirely, and is shocked when the truth is disclosed. ........
> <sigh>
> 
> Harold



That was exactly the case with the young man above. We were two professionals telling him that it was a 99.999% certain stinker, and he still did it!
(At least he did not insinuate that we were just trying to scare him, in order to steal the contact and the gold from him... on the other hand, I had to drag every detail out of him :roll: )


----------



## butcher (Jan 16, 2009)

My thinking is people think they can get somthing for nothing or free and that is were they get caught on the con artists fishing hook.blindly biting the easy bait,


----------



## Harold_V (Jan 17, 2009)

butcher said:


> My thinking is people think they can get somthing for nothing or free and that is were they get caught on the con artists fishing hook.blindly biting the easy bait,


Yep! I agree. When people come to understand that there is no free lunch, and, most importantly, that *money does not chase after people*, humans will have come a long ways towards avoiding being scammed. 

Harold


----------



## Oz (Jan 17, 2009)

They say there is a sucker born every minute, I think that is being optimistic.

The CIA fact book estimated that there were 211,090 people born globally every day in 2007. That is the same as 147 births per minute. Oh what a wonderful world we would live in if less than 1% of the world’s population was out of touch with reality.


----------



## Palladium (Oct 8, 2009)

:!: Craigslist powers activate. :!: :shock: :shock: :shock: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAhBHbyTfmM&feature=related


----------



## Palladium (Oct 8, 2009)

Or this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhEl6HdfqWM&NR=1


----------



## Irons (Oct 8, 2009)

Mormons Become Victims in $50 Million Scam to Sell Gold Bullion

By James Sterngold

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Henry Jones delivered the good news in a conference call with Tri Energy Inc.’s investors: The gold deal the company had been working on for years was about to pay off.

Jones, 55, a record producer in Marina del Rey, California, and his two partners had raised more than $50 million from 735 investors, which they said they were using to broker the sale to Arab buyers of 20,000 tons of gold owned by a group of Israelis. They promised to triple investors’ money -- if only Tri Energy could overcome some last-minute glitches.

All the company needed to close the deal, Jones said on the Dec. 20, 2004, conference call, taped by one of the participants, was a “safe-passage letter” that would cost $450,000. A few days later, on another call, he said Tri Energy had to come up with $100,000 to open a “commission account.” Then, on Jan. 15, 2005, a new request: The bank handling the deal wanted $125,000 to conduct an audit.

Like those caught up in other get-rich scams -- from Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which initially snared wealthy Jews, to an alleged $4.4 million fraud aimed at deaf people -- Tri Energy’s investors had something in common. Many were Mormons and born-again Christians who shared dreams and prayers on nightly conference calls. They vowed to use the profits for charitable works and kept raising funds, at times taking out second mortgages, draining retirement accounts and recruiting relatives.

While the delays and pleas for more money never stopped, the charade did. 

http://tinyurl.com/lezluj


----------



## Anonymous (Oct 12, 2009)

Can often be devastating ends on these storys for common person who feel not only that the lost their money but how could they be that dumb? And hurt themeselves. Scammers is the scum of the earth.


----------

