At 9:02 PM +0100 8/22/08, Ashley Sheridan wrote:
Sorry, but I can't understand why anyone would suddenly give me
money out of the blue, especially money to the tune of many
thousands of pounds, and by that reckoning, I fail to see however
legitimate it might look, how anyone could be duped...
Ash
Ash:
If you have ever worked in another country where bribes are the way
of getting things done, you'll quickly see that those types of things
are not as farfetched as one might think.
Hell, I've even had to pay bribes in this country (USA) to local
government officials to be able to work. Of course, they called it
something else, such as fees, taxes, bonds, overtime, or
contributions, but it was still "Pay me or I won't allow you to
work". The difference here is only in magnitude.
You see, I was confronted with conducting literally millions of
dollars of oil and gas exploration in Nigeria. The last project I
worked on was over 22 million dollars (in my other life, I'm a
Geophysicist -- see http://geophysics.com).
My client was approached with "lifting" oil as part of their payment.
The term "lifting" is simply selling you oil for less than the going
price and therein you get payment when you resale. The practice not
unheard of and ranges in the 20-50 million dollar transactions.
In any event, Nigerian "officials" provided documents claiming that
they could deliver provided that a US Corporation would participate
-- that's how I got into it. However, when I demanded up-front money,
the deal dissolved. I didn't think that much of it because many of
these overseas official types are easily offended when you question
"their word".
It wasn't until years later that we started hearing that these types
of deals as being Nigerian scams.
I think it was WC Fields who said "You can't cheat an honest man" and
that might have been the case here.
Cheers,
tedd
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