Deanna, words cannot express how sorry I am for your plight. I have fallen victim to a Nigerian scam also, and I'm at a point whereby I'm not sure what my next steps to take should be.
Basically I was contacted by a character who saw an ad of mine on a personals website. She claimed to be an American who is working in Nigeria as a model, but told me that she was working on contract and that her company paid her in the form of cheques and postal money orders. At first I had no clue or knowledge of such fraudsters and scammers out there who walk on this planet, but I made it clear to this person that I was not interested in a relationship with anyone who lived outside of my city area, and especially in another country, but that I'd still be open for penpal and online friendship. She agreed and even gave me her contact number (cellphone), and I gave her mine. I thought everything was still innocent, and we also exchanged mailing addresses.
A while later, she asked of me a big favor which was to cash her next upcoming money orders for her such that they would be written out to me. At first I was wondering, why would this person trust me with money orders that should really be written out to her for her work... I even asked her and she gave me some reason that when she read about me, she knew that I was the kind of person to nlove and trust... or some excuse like that. Anyway I got four money orders for $950 each, adding up to a total of $3800. I went ahead and deposited them into my account. It was after I made that deposit that I kept wondering, that all this was just way too easy. After doing a search online, I came to learn more about these Nigerian scams, but it was too early to tell if this was a scam or not, although this person really displayed many characteristics of ebing a scammer (example, saying that she desperately needed her money to pay bills, rushing meto withdraw the mney and western union it to her so called travel agent and hotel manager, etc.) I became worried and immediately called my bank's customer service and asked questions regarding how long it would take for cheques or money orders to be cleared and verified as valid. The representative told me that this process for amoney order usually just takes about a week, and so I figured that I'd wait for more than a week to see if that money order would come up as returned or fradulent. No such thing happened, and so I went right ahead to send that money out via western union.
Since nothing happened, I developed a level of trust in that person. About a month later, I received a cheque in the mail for $4700. The perpetrator told me that that cheque was her next payment and that she wanted me to deposit it in and send the mney to her via western union again. Since nothing happened (yet!) to the first deposit I made with the money orders, I deposited that cheque also, but I waited for some time to pass by just like I did the first time with the money orders. About five days later, the cheque came back to me as returned, and the $4700 amount that the cheque had was debited from my account. Fortunately, I never made any withdrawals since that deposit, so it was not like I had a negative statement in my account. And would you believe that the scammer had the audacity to rush me the entire time to withdraw the money andsend it to her? After that chequq got returned, I finally told this person that I no longer want to receive anymore cheques or money orders from her. She went even further to tell me that it's either me or her company that is trying to steal her money (how could she!) In the end she madeup some bogus story that it was her company that was trying to scam her and that she wants to come to the United States to meet me and that we could sue her company for trying to rip us both off. Immediately I figured that she's lying.
Well, the upsetting news came to me two weeks later when I got a letter from my bank in the mail (on last Saturday) that the amount of $3800 for the postal money orders got returned, and I found out that I have a huge negative balance on my bank statement. My heat was racing wildly and I almost passed out. I am still traumatized by this. When I told my mother what had happened, she obviously flipped out on me, but agreed to help me financially. My father doesn't know of any of this yet, and I know that he will find out about this soon. That Monday, I deposited the appropriate sum of money to cover my negative bank statement, and I tried to take immediate action. I tried to file a fraud claim with the bank, but was told that the bank do not file fraud claims of that nature. I was advised to make a report with the police, and even that turned out to be unsuccesful. The police told me that this was a civil court issue and that they could not file this as a report, and another officer also had me even more traumatized that I could get arrested for for this since even though I was scammed, I also was a middleman in the whole fraud scheme.
I'm trying to obtain legal advice right now as of this moment. I haven't gotten the money orders returned to me yet in the mail, but I can bet my
bottom dollar that those money orders are fraudulent, since the bank also told me that the $4700 cheque came back returned as fraudulent too.
Hence so far, the only thing I was able to accomplish was cover the negative balance in my bank account, and I have not been able to file any fraud case or report. I am also afraid to contact any other authorities because I am afraid that everyone would just end up pointing fingers at me, just like they are doing to you, Deanna. I'm really sorry for the situation that you're in, and I do believe that there need to be more rights for people like us, especially when it comes to cashing any form of cheques or money orders. There should be ways in which we could truly verify the authenticity of cheques or money orders that are issued to us. I only wish I knew better before. What I'm unfamilar with my situation is, why should it take so long for a cheque or money order to come back as unpaid? I was told by my bank that I could wait for at least a week so that I could know that a cheque or money order would be fully verified. Obviously I was given the wrong information.
That scammer is now asking me to send her $1800 so that she could pay for her hotel bills before she comes to the US, despite the fact that she knows that I have been ripped off by her, and that I am already in a state of crisis. Maybe she's angry that she did not get any money from the $4700 bogus cheque that I had been duped to deposit. Those scammers are completely heartless, have no conscience and it's pointless in trying to figure them out.
I only hope now that my bank could understand my situation and that I have paid all the expenses for the cheques that I have been ripped out of. I would hope that this does not result in any charges against me.
I hope to know more of the outcome of your situation, and of course if there was anything I could do to help, I would be more than willing to help out.
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