On The Third Hand

By now we all have read about, or received e-mails originated via various Nigerian sources. They all claim to offer the chance for the recipient to lay claim to several thousand to millions of dollars. Of course the hook is you must either send the originator some amount of cash up front, “to get the ball rolling,” or give up enough personal information so the scam artist can clean out your bank account or max out a credit card.

This account of the scam is a variation I have not heard before. It involves face to face contact and was perpetrated on a visiting Filipino seaman while inport La Goulette, Tunisia.

In a complaint filed before the Western Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, Jaime Inocencio, 45, a captain of a foreign-based vessel, identified the suspect as one Freeman Kingsley.

According to the victim, he met a Nigerian named Garuba when his ship made its port call in La Goulette, Tunisia last month. the Nigerian offered him a business partnership, naming his brother Kingsley as his contact in the Philippines.

Upon arrival in the country, the victim said he got a call from Kingsley with instructions to meet him at a hotel in Pasay City. During their meeting, the Nigerian asked for $5,000 (roughly P250,000) as his share in the business venture. The suspect also told him that his own cash is contained in a briefcase which they claimed at the hotel’s diplomatic courier.

The duo then proceeded to the suspect’s room at Amazonia Hotel along M.H. del Pilar street in Ermita, Manila.

Once inside the room, the suspect opened the briefcase which contained bundles of blackened paper bills covered with white powder and wads of cotton. The suspect said the blackened paper bills are genuine dollar bills which underwent a camouflage process to hide its value worth millions. The suspect even showed what looked like a genuine instruction manual from the US Embassy on how to remove the black powder from the bills.

The suspect got one of the blackened paper bills and poured a special liquid on it, revealing a genuine $100 bill. The victim said he was able to exchange the bill into pesos at a nearby money exchange shop.

The suspect then told the victim that he needed to secure more of the special liquid since what he carried was not enough to erase all the black powder from all the bills. He then left the room.

The victim said the suspect never returned. He tried to examine the blackened bills inside the brief case and found out that they were only pieces of cut-out cartons.

Not that it needs to be said, but for the record the US Embassy in Manila confirmed the instruction manual was fake and denied having issued any such manual. Setting aside for a moment just how dumb the Filipino seaman was for falling victim to this scam. You have to admire the inventivness of the perpetrators, the blackened paper bills/white powder ruse seems to be taken right out of Penn & Teller’s playbook. Simply brilliant, bravo, even though your are as crooked as an arthritic snake.

As for the Filipino seaman, no tears of sympathy will be shed here. If the dumbass is that stupid, too bad, he deserves just what he got, a lighter wallet. Also for the record, the $5.000 he lost is enough to support a Filipino family of 5-6 for at least a year (A very conservative estimate) in most parts of the country. Which only serves to highlight how just ignorant and blinded by dollar signs, even black ones, he was.

Cross posted within the Cranial Cavity