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Man Pays Dearly For US$100 Million Inheritance
This is the headline in one local newspaper on Oct 1 2007! One business man fell victim to an international cheating syndicate from West Africa. He befriended a widow believed to be from West Africa sometime in 2005 through a web site FriendX. In the course of the online relationship, he came to know her as Madam Marian Abu Bakar, a widow who has inherited from her late husband some US100 millions. She requested him to be her sworn brother after she revealed that she would died very soon from a cancer illness. The reason she made Lee her sworn brother was because Mariam does not have any relatives and she does not want the African government and her late husband’s relatives get their hands on the money. To cut the story short, he was later contacted by her lawyer, presumedly after she has died from cancer. In order to inherit the US$100 million, he has to bank some RM80,000 (equivalent to about US$23,500) to pay for Mariam’s funeral, medical and hospital bills including legal fees. According to the lawyer, he could not withdraw Mariam’s money as they were being withheld by the bank in Africa and they had to follow the procedure. He thought he has a windfall, not knowing that he has fall victim into another international cheating syndicate, much like the Nigerian scams a couple of years ago.
Why are we so gullible to such scam? Perhaps it is greed, yet maybe it’s a naive belief that some how, some gods must have favoured us a little more than others, and that we have some fortune coming our ways. In fact it is in our best interest not to tell other people, lest this fortune will leave us. Who knows how many people have fallen into such schemes. Though there are much publicity on such scams, yet we still read about fallen victims now and then.
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