How can people fall for this (419 scam)?

Dr House · 7 Sep 2010 at 19:52

So my Assistant ’s husband recently setup his own business. They basically import second hand clothes from around Europe by the ton and sell it on to second hand shops.

They were approached by someone in Africa to submit a tender to supply around 3.5 million euro (lol) worth of cloths.
I have attached the first page of the contract this African sent them. They asked me to look it over because English is not their first language.

I told him it was a scam but he did not seem to believe me. He insisted that the African has not asked for any money from him so how can it be as scam!

I pushed him a little more and found out that if they “won” the tender they would have to pay a small fee for processing the tender lol!

If they really fell for this scam it would have wiped them out, they have only just started the business and have borrowed many thousands of pounds to get it going.

I told them to try and play the scammer and see if they can scam him out of a little money

sanaxe1 · 7 Sep 2010 at 19:54

Greed clouds their judgement.

Participant · 7 Sep 2010 at 19:55

God help them with their business if they're stupid enough to fall for that.

Dr House · 7 Sep 2010 at 19:58

sanaxe1 said:
Greed clouds their judgement.

this is very true. I did feel bad telling him this as he really thought this was his change at a better life.

Robbie G said:
God help them with their business if they're stupid enough to fall for that.

Sadly you are right. I think they will struggle a lot!

Pixel · 7 Sep 2010 at 20:11

I really hate it when people ask for your advice, then look at you as if you're lying when you don't tell them what they want to hear.

Energize · 7 Sep 2010 at 20:42

Dr House said:
So my Assistant ’s husband recently setup his own business. They basically import second hand cloths from around Europe by the ton and sell it on to second hand shops.

Do you mean clothes?

Dr House · 7 Sep 2010 at 20:47

Energize said:
Do you mean clothes?

yep.

Edited thanks

MumboJumbo · 7 Sep 2010 at 20:58

Yeah they probably don't stand a chance tbh. But most businesses don't. The majority of them crumble because they are set up by people who lack the brain cells or the lucky moment or both.

Energize said:
Do you mean clothes?

I dunno, I reckon there is quite a market in second hand cloth. I just can't get enough of the stuff

neoboy · 7 Sep 2010 at 21:03

It is hard to tell if this is a scam or not when it's a South African company based in Togo with a contract for second hand clothing from Czech Republic and dead website. Although it's impressive that they actually used coherent English, clearly they are advancing, however will the population of this great nation cope now against such scandalous attacks?