The Black Dollars
Some of the comments to the previous post brought this to mind...
We’ve had a few Nigerian guys pulling the Black Dollars scam here in Portugal some time ago. Some people say this is the 'last step' of the Nigerian Letters scam, although in the cases we've had here there were no e-mails involved.
The scam is quite simple: some guys claim they received money from the CIA to finance a revolution in Africa.
These guys would stay in one of the finest hotels, pretending to be loaded with money.
They would then approach wealthy guests and offer them to sell the infamous Black Dollars.
The dollars ($100 USD bills usually) are covered with some kind of special ink so they look like black pieces of paper. This special ink can be washed off with a special chemical product. The guy that was supposed to hand them the bottles with the special liquid got killed and the bottles got lost. They still have a little bit of the product and they can perform a demonstration on how to clean the bills. They hand over a huge pile of black pieces of paper in exchange for money to buy the chemical product; they hand over the bottles for another money payment.
The usual ‘deal’ was $50 USD per piece of paper.
Some people lost huge amounts of money with this scam. What did they do? They went to the police and pressed charges.
Ok. Fair enough. But why weren’t the so-called victims arrested? After all, trying to buy foreign currency in the black market is still a crime here.
Of course I have no pity for those who lost money with the Black Dollars. They all were rich guys to start with, they all knew there was something illegal with all this and yet were still willing to go forward with a crime in order to profit from it. We are not talking about some poor guy loosing his lifetime savings, we’re talking big fish who could “invest” up to $600,000 USD on this (that was actually the value of the ‘worst’ case I’ve heard of).
I don’t pity that guy. No sir. And I still believe he should be charged for trying to buy foreign currency illegally.
We’ve had a few Nigerian guys pulling the Black Dollars scam here in Portugal some time ago. Some people say this is the 'last step' of the Nigerian Letters scam, although in the cases we've had here there were no e-mails involved.
The scam is quite simple: some guys claim they received money from the CIA to finance a revolution in Africa.
These guys would stay in one of the finest hotels, pretending to be loaded with money.
They would then approach wealthy guests and offer them to sell the infamous Black Dollars.
The dollars ($100 USD bills usually) are covered with some kind of special ink so they look like black pieces of paper. This special ink can be washed off with a special chemical product. The guy that was supposed to hand them the bottles with the special liquid got killed and the bottles got lost. They still have a little bit of the product and they can perform a demonstration on how to clean the bills. They hand over a huge pile of black pieces of paper in exchange for money to buy the chemical product; they hand over the bottles for another money payment.
The usual ‘deal’ was $50 USD per piece of paper.
Some people lost huge amounts of money with this scam. What did they do? They went to the police and pressed charges.
Ok. Fair enough. But why weren’t the so-called victims arrested? After all, trying to buy foreign currency in the black market is still a crime here.
Of course I have no pity for those who lost money with the Black Dollars. They all were rich guys to start with, they all knew there was something illegal with all this and yet were still willing to go forward with a crime in order to profit from it. We are not talking about some poor guy loosing his lifetime savings, we’re talking big fish who could “invest” up to $600,000 USD on this (that was actually the value of the ‘worst’ case I’ve heard of).
I don’t pity that guy. No sir. And I still believe he should be charged for trying to buy foreign currency illegally.
posted by DCveR at 10:28 PM
5 Comments:
I agree with you 100%. Sad that the 'victims' only get a slap on the wrist. (If that!)
People who profit from crime are the best ones to fleece.
I think bad morals run alongside with stupidity and ignorance.
This one is so lame how could anyone fall for it! I do see the irony in victims whining when they were also doing illegal things. Well let's hope they all get what they deserved.
You know that saying, a fool and his money are soon parted!
glitzy: In fact they all got away with it except for a few of the Nigerian mobsters, and even those because they already had other things pending agaisnt them.
penny lane: We also get religious con artists here! Ripping people of their money. But those victims I do pity. Most of them are elderly citizens who have some savings and no one to look after them. That is a few notches lower.
cream: We have a saying - Ladrão que rouba ladrão tem cem anos de perdão; meaning a robber who robs another robber has a hundred years of amnesty.
kris: The problem is gathering proof, as soon as the victim gets a lawyer the will to prosecute the con artists starts to fade.
GG: There is a lot of truth to that in most cases.
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