captainmorganrum
Wrexham
Leamington man loses $150,000 in Nigerian scam
Leamington man loses $150,000 in Nigerian scam
Beware of :braders: kids!
Leamington man loses $150,000 in Nigerian scam
Beware of :braders: kids!
British postie has been left struggling with debt and depression after losing £130,000 to an internet scam involving Nigerian fraudsters.
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Shane Symington, of Portsmouth, Hampshire, made friends with an American woman calling herself Angela Gates on the MySpace website in spring 2007.
The pair got along famously for several weeks until she starting asking the 32-year-old for cash to pay for her mother's funeral and medical expenses.
He said the requests from "Angela" kept coming, and she was soon asking him to pay legal fees that would free up land she had inherited.
She claimed the land was worth more than £1m and Mr Symington continued to help her throughout the year.
By last year, he had handed over his bank details and more than £100,000.
The postie said he eventually got a text message from his "friend" Angela, who revealed the whole business had been a scam.
He said: "It said that it was all false and that Angela was actually a man from Nigeria. I guess he came clean because he thought he had taken all the money he could."
But Mr Symington's problems did not end there - he was then contacted by another woman, again from America, claiming she had also been caught in the scam.
It said that it was all false and that Angela was actually a man from Nigeria.
He decided to help her pay her legal costs and contributed towards hiring two ex-FBI agents in an attempt to regain the lost money for both of them.
But Mr Symington now believes these people were also in on the fraud.
He reckons he has dished out more than £30,000 to find the culprits, bringing his total losses to more than £130,000.
He said: "I feel sick from it all, I feel disillusioned, they have just played on my good nature.
"I've lost my life-savings, I have two loans and credit card debts, I'm in huge debts because of all of this.
"Before this happened, I used to go out every night, now I just stay in because I've lost all the self-confidence in my life and I don't have the money to go out any more.
"I've also had five weeks off with depression from work."
A police spokeswoman added that there was little police could do to help Mr Symington get his money back.
She said: "The money cannot be recovered due to the current political situation in Nigeria, resulting in a lack of co-operation from the police in the country."
Quoting from the Windsor, Ontario report, you mean we have a famous 'close relationship' with Canada?From that Leamington story, what seems bizarre to me is that we all know about 9/11, the massive impact that it had upon the world, yet in 2005 there was 'a 2005 bomb attack on London'. Not 7/7, not 'THE' bomb attack, but 'A' bomb attack. Shows the way our famous 'close relationship' works, doesn't it?
Quoting from the Windsor, Ontario report, you mean we have a famous 'close relationship' with Canada?
One dysfunctional 'special relationship'with the USA is quite enough to be going on with.
Excellent new word 'bilked'
Use that all the time at work, usually in the context of someone doing a bunk without paying a bill- at a restaurant or petrol station normally.
Fair point. Just goes to show how people in most countries imagine they're more important to the rest of the world than they really are.Oh. I saw the $s and assumed it was the US, not thinking of the Canadian dollar. Not sure that excuses it though... it's not like we talk about 'A' Madrid bombing, is it, special relationship or none.
For real? Genuinely never heard it before. Sort of like one of these Aussie newspaper reports where the victim was 'bashed'. IMHO you'd need a heart of stone not to at least SNIGGER.