KEY POINTS:
My heart freely also burns with the desire to give all love to the man which deserves this. My letter is sent from agency, from an email of agency, and I ask on him to not answer. And to write only on my email. It for me will
be easier. I shall wait for your letter and I hope that in the future we become the relatives each other.
Is this the kind of letter that would make you open your wallet and send off money to the author?
Well there's a sucker born every minute - and the greedy, the naive, the lonely and vulnerable are prime targets for the new breed of online fraudsters.
The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, banks, financial institutions and the IT industry have just wrapped Fraud Awareness Week, designed to keep up education and enforcement around dubious online schemes and rip-offs.
Opening the campaign, Consumer Affairs Minister Judith Tizard, cited overseas research suggesting one-in-10 people had lost money to scammers, each with an average loss of $2000.
If true here in New Zealand, that would be more than 425,000 people losing more than $850 million.
Terry Mortensen, Westpac's head of fraud and security services - risk management, (and the lucky recipient of the love letter shown above) says he only sees "the absolute tip of the iceberg" of customers hit by scams.
But despite all that comes across his desk, Mortensen thinks that Kiwis might be just a tad brighter than your average global dupe.
Not, however, the man from Northland, who - with the co-operation of his accountant - got so deep into a West African fraud that, after paying tens of thousands of dollars, travelled to the Ivory Coast to finalise details around the transfer of his ill-gotten millions into his account.
"He was taken to a bunker - in a chauffeur-driven limousine in the middle of the sticks - was escorted through this labyrinth of passages, into a room with a big pirate chest with a lock on the top. They lifted the lid and it was filled with US dollars."
They told the man that, after just a few more dollars for expenses (bribes, permits, etc), the money would be on its way to New Zealand.
Westpac was alerted to the scheme by the man, and it was only after he was shown identical documents - which had been sent to another target of the scheme - that the penny finally dropped.
"He was devastated, absolutely devastated," says Mortensen. "I keep saying to people money only travels one way between New Zealand and West Africa - it always goes in and never comes out.
"When you are affected by a scam, paying money in an advance fee of any kind, people are very reluctant to talk about it or admit it.
"And it's only by our staff engaging people in conversation, or looking at some unusual spending patterns that they may be involved in, that they become alerted to a customer's involvement in a scam.
"We feel it's our duty to warn of the propensity and frequency of these scams. Some people take an awful lot of convincing.
"At least three or four times a year, Westpac refuses to undertake a transaction for a customer they believe is part of a scam.
"We can't stop people embarking on their transactions with Nigeria or wherever, but we would prefer it if they didn't do it through us.
"Customers then begin to realise these people [the banks] are serious. 'They don't want to deal with my transaction or my account because they are trying to protect me'.
"That's all we're trying to do - to protect the customer, from themselves more than anybody," says Mortensen.
There are two basic forms of scam, he says - one that asks for only a small amount - as little as $30 to enter a draw or lottery of some kind.
The other is where the target is promised a lot of money in return for going along with shady dealings.
"That is interesting, because on almost every occasion that occurs the customer becomes a bit dishonest and a bit complicit in it because they are prepared to go along with a lie," says Mortensen.
At some stage the person will be asked for some kind of advance fee before the money can be released.
But pirate chests and trips to the Ivory Coast aside, we Kiwis might be sharper than we think.
"Per capita, we are a touch brighter than other countries," says Mortensen. "I like to think we are being targeted less rather than more because of that. People are getting more educated, more quickly."
His dream is for New Zealand to become a country the scammers ignore - a country that provides such little reward it falls off the radar screen of even the most determined crook.
"I'd like to think we can become a country that is almost immune from these, that the scammers say 'there's no point in dealing with New Zealand, we get knocked back more than acceptable'."
And that's the message - "Do Not Respond". Sending an email reply, even if it's just to tell the Nigerian Oil Billionaire to bugger off, will simply confirm there's a live body at the end of the email address.
"I used to object to getting these emails on my computer, and I used to embark on discussions with them, saying 'don't darken my doorstep ever again'. I just got more and more until I stopped, and then I got less and less. I get very few now."
On the web: www.scamwatch.co.nz
SCAM STORIES
From the fraud and security services team at Westpac:
The overpayment scam: A Westpac customer advertised his car for sale on Trade Me in June last year for $5000. He received a reply from an international buyer who wanted to ship the car overseas.
The buyer sent the man a US$15,000 ($18,800) cheque and asked the car seller to deposit it and return the balance to a nominated international account. The balance was to cover the freight for the car. The cheque made payable to the man looked genuine but was fraudulent.
Questions the customer or bank staff might ask:
* Who would want to buy a car for $5000 from overseas? (New Zealand imports cars and doesn't export many.)
* Who would pay the difference between $5000 and US$15,000 ($18,800) for shipping a car from New Zealand?
* What the bank says: "If it doesn't look like a legitimate deal, it is probably a scam." The inheritance scam: A female Westpac customer received a personal email from a London solicitor named "Don Maree" in June last year. This said an oil magnate client - who had the same surname as the woman in New Zealand - had been killed with his family in a car crash.
A long search failed to find any next of kin to pay the US$4.8 million ($6.02m) inheritance. The suggestion was for the woman to pose as a relative and keep 65 per cent of the money. She decided to go along with the plan, which included paying £2800 ($7065) of the "solicitor's" expenses.
After the next round of providing ID and other documents to "the bank", this woman was promised her money once a tax charge and expenses of £1475 ($3722) were covered.
She told Westpac the reasons behind her request for another international payment order, which was when the bank's fraud unit got involved. The bank said that "notable among the emails from this scammer was poor written English with grammatical and spelling errors - almost always present in this type of scam originating from Nigeria presenting the appearance of a London-based deal".
