A Relationship Rekindled; The Nigerian Returns

Just when I thought my dear friend Khalil Maher from Nigeria Pakistan had forsaken me for another, he reared his nefarious scamming head and continued our correspondence.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I forgot to tell you how I responded to the last email from Khalil (you can read the first two chapters of the epic saga here and here). He had asked me for my full name(s), age, address, and phone number. It took me a while to decide how I was going to advance the conversation without blowing my cover. On the one hand, I wanted to give him as much information as possible, gaining his trust. But I was slightly uncomfortable giving him information that I could be spammed on (my address and phone number). While I sat around pondering (I do that a lot. It looks even more ridiculous than it sounds), my dear pen pal Khalil was getting impatient.

Hello i,m still waiting for your response pls if you want to help me

be fast? K.M

Mr. Impatient. Kinda rude, but I'll let it go this time. I mean, I am a Successful American Businessman. I have a life. I'll get to your email when I'm done being Successful for the day.

But seriously, it was now or never. This is what I decided on:

Sorry for the delay, my friend.

As I mentioned earlier, I do run a pretty successful business, and I can get caught up in the flood of emails I get on a daily basis.

My full name is John Robert Smith, I am 39 years old. Before I give you my phone number and address, I would like to maybe get to know you better. If you could answer some simple questions for me, it would put my mind at ease. Why do you want to live in the UK? From my own business experience, I can tell you that the land of opportunity is in America. What is in the UK that you want to live there? i could possibly get you a job at my company (we manufacture devices called Interwebs, a new way to connect people around the world through small strands of highly conductive metals that carry all kinds of information to and from where ever you want. Slowly but surely, we are profiting immensely from the venture. The world hasn't seen anything like it), if that's what you need.

Are you originally from Pakistan? Your English is not so bad for somebody learning it later in life.

Like I said, I will be glad to help. I just want to get to know you a little better.

Hope to hear from you soon.

-John Smith

iclickonspam@gmail.com

I like it. I didn't give him the information he wanted, but I implied that I would be willing to do so. I just needed some from him first. I want to see how long he can keep up his act. I want to see how much story he actually has to backup his scam. I figured some good sympathy and compliments would go a long way towards gaining his trust. And once again, anyone with a brain can read my email and realize it's a load of steaming excrement. Communication through highly conductive strands of metal? Surely nobody's figured how to do that one out yet! You see, nobody said I couldn't have fun doing this.

Anyways, after sending this one out, I expected a quick response from Khalil, hopefully giving me some more tidbits of his adventures through the European Banking System.

Weeks went by, and I began to fear the worst. Did I really lose him already? We were just getting started! What was untrustworthy about my response. Was it the whole inventing the Interwebs thing? Did I go too far with that? I pondered once again, and then I paced while pondering (that's when I'm stressed and need a workout), and I finally decided to give up. I guess Khalil was smarter than I originally suspected. He didn't trust me anymore and moved on to better hunting grounds. So would I.

And then, when hope had turned her back on me, on a white stallion galloping away from the rising sun, Khalil Mohammed Maher charged his way back into my inbox! He hadn't given up on me after all! he was back for more, and this is what went down:

Hello,very sorry i was sick before,but i,m get better,here is my
personal data # 4 singo lane,shersha, karachi,pakistan is my
house,murate finance house,close E 22, sindh Estate is my office
address.Because i inherit the currency trade from my father,Alhj Ahmah
Hassan Khalil El Murat. Here is my phone number +928445550555.I hope

to hear from u? k.M?

I forgive you, Khalil. We all get sick for weeks at a time and don't check our emails. And I'm glad you,re get better. That's some juicy data in that email. I have no idea what he's talking about (he can be a little generous with the comma usage), but this is precisely what Google was invented for, right?

Ok, let's start from the beginning. Karachi is the capital of Pakistan. Karachi is split up into towns. Shershah is a neighborhood in the Keamari Town of Karachi. Keamari Town is on the west coast of Karachi, and boasts a 99% muslim population of around 380,000 (according the website). He writes Singo lane, but he probably meant Sango Lane, which is problematic because that's a neighborhood in a different town: Lyari Town. A Google maps analysis reveals the following:

This place called Singo Lane (apparently, there is argument among Google and Wikipedia on how to spell the time) is pretty much in between Shersha and Lyari, so I won't gripe too much about it. I have no idea what to do with #4. I doesn't come up on any search for an address.

Either way, moving on. Things start to fall apart with the next statement. I couldn't find any mention of Murate finance house anywhere. I even looked through the banks and financial institutions listing on the city website. It doesn't exist. The closest thing I could find was Murat, which is a small rural town somewhere else in Pakistan. Regarding the Sindh Estate "address", there is a place called Sindh Industrial Trade Estate, in a town in Karachi named after the Estate itself (SITE Town). Maybe E22 is an address in that complex. I can't find any other refernce to it.

The next part is a little creepy, if not outright hilarious. It's his father's name, Alhj Ahmah Hassan Khalil El Murat. The one with the currency exchange business. If you give that name to Google, you get results that all have to do with listings of Guantanamo Bay prisoners! None of them exactly match that name, but it sounds like Khalil may have used that list to come up with his "father's" name. See for yourself. I'm not sure what to think about that, but I'm definitely amused.

Lastly, the phone number doesn't come up in any international directory I saw. I don't really want to pay for an international phone call (I was banned my Google Adsense, so I have no income to spend on this blog anymore), and I can't imagine anything productive coming out of that call.

So, we've proven Khalil Maher is in fact a lying scammer (Yay!!!!). We may have known that already, but this is fun! Are you having fun yet? I need to write back to him, but I don't know if he'll respond if I don't give him more info. Any ideas?

Responding to a Nigerian Scam Artist

This little treasure happened upon my mailbox last night and I can't help but share. This guy obviously put some real effort into this email, and he deserves some recognition.

I greet you to seek help.
The bank advise for a reliable bank account from your country so that my funds could be transferred without stress of the ecb and your contact came to me after an intensive search. my name is Khalil Mohammed Maher, i live in Karachi Pakistan as a business man who deals on currency trading. My wife Shahira and our only kid?s a boy and a girl named Mohammed and Afiyah lost their lives in a fatal car accident September 29th last year when traveling to visit her relatives in a nearby town. after that great lost to my entire life, i decided to relocate by having a dwelling in UK, been impatient to leave and making plans on how to buy a house in UK, i unluckily met with one crook named Robert Stephens who based in UK and claimed on the web to be estate agent on built-up buildings. We made arrangement for a flat of 3 bed rooms in Cheshire Greater Manchester UK that he requested
£480,000 pounds and instructed me to make a wire transfer of that sum to his account with Abbey National bank UK, which i obeyed. luckily for me after the transfer, the bank confirmed his account to be fraudulent and had been receiving fraudulent payments from numerous people, which made them seized all the money in his account then closed it. I made known to the bank i paid the £480,000 pounds that drew their attention to his account and even sent the payment facts for their confirmation to refund my money, which they confirmed and are willing to make a refund of the paid sum to me. please help me receive my money and transfer to me since the bank have said they cannot make a transfer of that sum to me in Pakistan based on the high security level of the European central bank. write to me via the below given email id if i can get help from you and you shall be rewarded with 5% after the refund. thanks and may God the almighty guide and bless you.
K. M. Maher.
khalilmohammedmaher @gmail.com

Ok, this is the plan. I am going to create a Gmail account, respond to this guy, and see where things go from there. I'm not kidding. I really want to know how these things actually go down.

I'll be giving you a play by play as things really do "go down."