Nigerian Scam, Frum Style!

Nigerian Scam, Frum Style!

Here is one of many standard Nigerian SCAMS whereby the criminal Internet gang get hold of the email contact list of their victim and send this letter out to all the victim's family, friends and other contacts. This email scam is a few years old already. However, recently it's been used by scammers who high jack someones Facebook account and proceed to use the account, pretending to be that person in order to chat with the friends and attempt to trick them into sending the gang money

I'm sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it's due to the situation of things right now.I'm stuck in London,United Kingdom with my family right now, we came down here for a short vacation then I was robbed, worse of it is that bags, cash and credit cards and my cell phone were stolen at GUN POINT, it's such a crazy experience for us but thank God we still have our lives and passports saved.We need help flying back home, the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is we still have our passports and return tickets but currently having troubles paying off the hotel bills and also getting a cab to take us to the airport.

Please I need you to loan me some money, will refund you as soon as I'm back home, I promise.

Kindly Help me now

Now compare the above to an email which was sent to an American/Israeli friend of mine last week:

I'm sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it's because of the situation of things right now. I'm stuck in London, UK with family right now, we came here on vacation. We were robbed, the situation seems worse as our bags, cash, credit cards and cell phone were stolen at GUN POINT. It's such a crazy experience for us. We need help flying back home, the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is that we still have our passports, although we don't have enough money to get our flight tickets back home. Please, I need you to loan me some money (1000 British Pounds) but I will appreciate any amount you can help with. Baruch Hashem I will reimburse you as soon as I am back home, I promise.

Shalom

XXXXXX

It's more or less the same letter with the English partially corrected and a "Baruch Hashem" added for authenticity. Fortunately, my friend noticed that it should have been "Be'ezrat Hashem" and immediately smelt a rat!

The Nigerians are obviously targeting the Frum community which I suppose is a kind of a backhanded compliment as they obviously have concluded that Torah Jews are more than willing to perform chesed.