We recently experienced a Case of Fraud

Dear Madam/Sir,

We recently experienced a case of fraud through engaging in e-business with a gang of swindlers in West Africa, and I wish to inform all our friends to try and avoid this kind of thing.

In early November 03, we received an inquiry from a person from Benin, West Africa and we will name him Contact A, (the Management Director of a company name Entex Global) for footwear. We contacted him and after several e-mails, the person requested our company to send 2 footwear samples for each style we had.

A total of 14 styles (28 Pairs) of footwear were sent via DHL to the person concerned with the address as mentioned in his returned-mail and our quotation was submitted to him at the same time. On receipt of our samples, the person then requested more in other, bigger sizes.

We refused to send further samples, as the first delivery cost us a lot of money, and informed him that we have to receive payment for the first samples first or we will not send further samples.

We received an e-mail from another person, (We'll call him Contact B) who mentioned he was a staff member from Continental Bank of Benin informing us that a sum of money (USD65,000) had been sent to Hong Kong, and would be put into our Bank A/C if we paid USD1,500.00 in bank charges to his account.

Contact A was informed of the matter, and we insisted that the Bank Charges should be deducted from the sum of money instead of paying from our side.Contact A promised that he will pay USD700.00 on our behalf if we pay the balance USD800.00 to settle the matter. He instructed us to send the money through Western Union to him where he will gather it together with his amount to pay the bank.

A sum of USD847.00 (HK$6,562.00 including charges) was sent through Western Union to the name of Contact A, on 11 December 2003. We received an e-mail again from Contact A, complaining that the money sent was not enough for USD800.00- the total amount he received was only USD650.00. So he said we should send USD150.00 more. To solve the problem, another USD180.00 was sent to Contact A early the next day.

We expected everything to be settled to receive the purchase amount at our Bank A/C in order to start production, but we suddenly received another mail from Contact A, that his boss (Contact C) was very angry that he had to pay the other USD700.00 amount on our behalf, and refused to release the purchase amount, and insisted that we have to send the balance of the money or they will not release the payment to us. The mood in his mail was terrible-he said he would lose his job if we refused to send this balance. In order to resolve the matter again, another amount of USD889.00 (HK$6893.00 which including HK$362 for handling charges and 20% addition to prevent any currency change anomalies in his country) was sent to Contact A through Western Union on 17 Dec 2003.

Again, we received another demand that we have to send another USD350.00 to settle the matter.

He told us that his boss insists we pay this USD350 or they will stop the transaction. He explained that his boss was an American who was very tough on the matter, and asked us to contact his boss by phone to discuss the problem. We called his boss in the evening and he insisted we pay USD350 more and then he will instruct the bank to release the payment. Based on the phone call conversation, the accent of Contact C was found to be also African.

A few days later another mail from Contact B informed us that if we can pay him USD500.00 commission, he will instruct his representative in Hong Kong to release the purchase amount into our Bank Account.

We realized that this was complete fraud. Although it was only a small amount of money involved, a lot of time was consumed with these Vampires. I would like to share this experience with our friends.