#3718 by Jack Smith
Sat Jun 21, 2008 4:19 pm
Here is a document that a scammer ("Mr. Wong") recently emailed to his intended victim. The line was that the victim now has a bank account in Amsterdam, and now this money has been transfered into that account. The victim was told that the money is his, but he needs to come to Amsterdam with a large amount of cash (CASH, not traveler's checks, credit card, bank wire, or anything else) so as to get the access code for the new bank account.
Please don't anybody go for this. The bank shown on the form as receiving the money, "Guarantee Deutsche Bank" in Amsterdam, simply doesn't exist. The scammers went so far as to construct a nice-looking website for the bank, but it's all phoney. The giveaways are that the name of the bank at the website is "Guarantee Dutch Bank" and that the contact phone number for the bank is a cell phone. Hello? A bank using a cell phone as its main contact line???
People that fly to Amsterdam with a large amount of cash to meet a stranger and claim a multi-million dollar fund usually....well, usually they get attacked and robbed, and sometimes they get killed.
If you get a document anything like this one, check it out with the bank itself before doing anything. If it's from a stranger, it's almost certainly a fraud, but you can always just call the bank and ask what's going on. Hang Seng Bank exists, for example, but a very little research shows that it is part of the HSBC bank group, which has offices all over the world. Call the office in London, in Hong Kong, or in New York, and ask them if the document you got is for real.
Please don't anybody go for this. The bank shown on the form as receiving the money, "Guarantee Deutsche Bank" in Amsterdam, simply doesn't exist. The scammers went so far as to construct a nice-looking website for the bank, but it's all phoney. The giveaways are that the name of the bank at the website is "Guarantee Dutch Bank" and that the contact phone number for the bank is a cell phone. Hello? A bank using a cell phone as its main contact line???
People that fly to Amsterdam with a large amount of cash to meet a stranger and claim a multi-million dollar fund usually....well, usually they get attacked and robbed, and sometimes they get killed.
If you get a document anything like this one, check it out with the bank itself before doing anything. If it's from a stranger, it's almost certainly a fraud, but you can always just call the bank and ask what's going on. Hang Seng Bank exists, for example, but a very little research shows that it is part of the HSBC bank group, which has offices all over the world. Call the office in London, in Hong Kong, or in New York, and ask them if the document you got is for real.
