It has come to my attention that there is a new attempt by unscrupulous individuals in Nigeria to entice persons outside of their country to provide personal information and/or documents through which they can then cheat them out of money. There have been a number of iterations of the Nigerian scams ranging from official looking letters purporting to come from official Nigerian government sources, to this latest email approach. All have a common theme - that the Nigerian individual(s) have come into possession of large amounts of US currency which they need to get out of Nigeria and that they will generously share large sums with someone who will assist them to do so. As below, they request bank details and often letterhead stationery. The information provided is then used to access the private bank account of the "mark" as the target is known. In some cases, individuals have even been contacted and enticed to come to Nigeria where they have been robbed or kidnapped. The email below was received by one of our employees at his Cisco email address. Should you receive such an email, simply delete it, as responding could ultimately put you at some risk. Tom >Dear ____________, > > > Good day my nice friend how is business, hope fine. Thanks be to God Almighty. > > Well I know this letter or business proposal must come to you as a surprise. I am Engineer Mail Okeke, an official of the Nigerian Printing Security Company, a government parastatal in charge of minting and printing currencies. In any case, your name and address was given to me by a very trusted and known friend who works with the World Trade Organization during a conference in Dakar, Senegal, when I was searching for a trusted partner who would render us assistance to receive such huge cash into his/her account overseas. In fact, after a brief discussion on the nature of the deal, which is risk free, he decided to introduce yourself to me that I should contact you. > > I am fortunate, including my two other colleagues in our department to have cornered and removed two boxes containing $ 60 million each of defaced currency ready for cleaning. The two boxes are altogether worth $ 120million. The removed money was kept in our department, Minting and Printing section, on the order of the Federal Government, because it was defaced. With our own initiative, we have fortunately gone through a secret test with a scientist here in Nigeria who performed the cleaning process and found it fit for use. The little sample cleaned was tested in the public market in Europe, America and Asia; it was undetected and accepted hitch-free. > > My main purpose of writing you is that I have agreed with the two other colleagues here in Nigeria that as civil servants in government services, such huge cash cannot be processed here in Nigeria, it requires a foreign partner outside the country who will provide us with suitable account in his/her country to enable us process the cleaning with a scientist in London and the cash will be paid into his account for further business investment in his country or any other country. We have also agreed that any foreign partner who would assist us in providing all necessary requirements to realize the $ 120 million into cash will receive 30 per cent of the gross amount, while 60 percent comes to us and 10 per cent will be earmarked for unforeseen expenses that may arise during the course of performing the cleaning process in the laboratory. > > The following are the requirements: > > 1. Your acceptance E-mail > 2. Your private telephone and fax numbers for easy contact. > 3. Your full detailed bank particulars. > > Please, note that this business require a high degree of secrecy as we want you to handle it with carefulness as every correspondence should come through our email address given to you for easy communications and confidentiality. If you are interested, please do not hesitate to communicate with us. > > Thank you. > > Yours faithfully, > > Engr. Mail Okeke >