Dianne Bamba or Philippe Mercier

Dianne involved in a love scam? From Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) or Sierra Leonne?
I suspect she is the identity of Philippe Mercier from France.
Very good at developing a relationship via email, I played this one out, no money sent. But has anyone else has a contact?
You can find her profile on Datana (or Dantana) a dating/friendship site.
Her 'lawyer' is the Hon. Fitz Gerard (no kidding!) from Adjiban.
She appears to have around US$10M inheritance to be shipped out of the country and invested by a trusted indivdual. Spoke with her on the phone (at her 'lawyer's' house), her voice sounds very mature, her age is said to be around 21. Hmmmm?
Comments please.
Steve

Welcome Steven

She appears to have around US$10M inheritance to be shipped out of the country and invested by a trusted indivdual

Definitely 100% scam

I suspect she is the identity of Philippe Mercier from France

I'm a bit confused about this part though. If you could supply more information, such as relevant emails and headers, that would be useful.

If you go the dating site DATANA, or DANTANA, look up Dianne Bamba, and check the various profile links, you'll see one of them directly connects to Philippe. When I mentioned it to her, she said that Ivory Coast and France are interlinked.

I put my picture on the site to get a message to her when she didn't reply to my usual one. I was curious to see how far the scam would go. And I phoned her (arranged at her 'lawyer's' home). The voice and her picture simply don't fit. The voice was of a woman around 40, Dianne claims to be around 20. It might cultural, I've been around, but I'm not satisfied it is.

Let me know your thoughts. Oh, yes, I'm sure it's a scam.

Steve

Hi Steven,

Yes, it is definately a scam

I think you will find some relevant information in This search result

As Benjamin pointed out, emails and email addresses would be a big help in finding more information.

Also if you know how to find headers than that would be usefull to us as well, if you dont know how to find headers then let us know which email providor you use such as yahoo or hotmail and we can give you directions on finding the header with that email providor

Also any phone numbers you have would also be helpful

Edit, just taking a look through the results of the above search, the first one I clicked on was this This which is posted at the anti scam site http://www.419baiter.com

I have copied it below

From: Bamba <philippe>
Reply-To: [email protected]
Subject: HELLO DEAR
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 10:14:12 +0200 (04:14 EDT)


Hello Dear Chosen one,

Please excuse me for all the inconveniences my mail could cause you. I have the pleasure to expose to you my predicaments.

Please even if we never knew before, I believe firmly that on the basis of the right of humanitarian assistance that a real confidence and love can arise from our communication and also a real partnership between us.

I am Dianne Bamba, the legitimate daughter of the Director of cocoa export murdered by the rebel’s here because of the war and political crisis going on here in my country. My father had deposited a consignment with a security company here containing the sum of 10.700, 000m USD (Ten million seven hundred dollars USD) to allow him to conceive a project of investment at the end of his mandate. Regrettably the fate decided on it otherwise.

Today my major concern is to move out this sum outside here. Given that I am the only child and I have seriously suffered from the ragging and the harassments on behalf of the political opponents of my Father. It is in this prospect that I contact you.

Because of the political war and the hostilities in this country I seriously wish to leave from here and live the rest of my life in a more peaceful and politically more stable and quiet country. I am honourably seeking your assistance in the following ways:

1) To provide a bank account into which this money would be transferred to .

(2) To serve as a guardian of this fund since I am under age.

(3) To make arrangement for me to come over to your country to further my education.

If you can be of an assistance to me I will be pleased to offer to you 20% of the total fund. I would like to count on your human, virtuous and professional qualities to actualise this project. I look forward to receive your urgent respond

Thanks for your care and may God bless you for your kind heart to hear the cry of an orphan.

Yours sincerely

Dianne Bamba

The 2 names used here are very unlikely to be real names of the person sending the email, they will be just 2 of many email addresses used by this same scammer.

I will continue adding more details as I find them,

A good way to tell many scams is to pick out parts of the email and do a search on them, quite often the opening line can tell a much bigger story than you would expect.

A search result on ( Please excuse me for all the inconveniences my mail could cause you ) Click Here
And another search on ( I am Dianne Bamba, the legitimate daughter of the Director of cocoa ) Click Here

Now a search on ( To provide a bank account into which this money would be transferred to ) Click Here

You will see that by doing a few searches you will in most cases find proof of a scam but if you dont then look for the telltale signs.

I could type them here but one of our members Obi has a site which includes a scam checklist that you may find usefull, I am sure he wont mind me directing you there, he calls it "the scam checklist" and you can take a look at it by Clicking Here

Thanks guys, i don't know how to search headers, they were both on live.fr, as for me, youcan see i'm on hotmail. Wouldn't mind knowing how to do that. Thanks.
Steve

Hi, Steven

This is from The University of Delaware Police Forensics site:

To view headers in Hotmail, open the email concerned then proceed as follows.

Go to Options
Go to Preferences
Scroll down to Headers, then click on Advanced Headers

Hope this helps.

Great, does it work in live.fr too? Or Yahoo?

Here's a phone number from Bamba's 'lawyer':

Please my dear try to call ane email the lawyer below.



TEL: 00225-09 05 09 65
E-mail: [email protected]
Name: Hon Dr.Fitz Gerard

Please with the name of God,I plead you and request you to call the lawyer with this his Direct number above and have some oral discussion with him over this project on how all will be concluded legally please.

What you think?

The 'Headers' are hidden pieces of script in all emails, whether they be from live, yahoo, or any other service provider.

As the receiver of the email, you will be able to see the headers using the method above - irrespective of which email provider the message was sent from.

Edited to add: The phone number iists as follows:

Number billable as mobile number
Country or destination Côte D'Ivoire
City or exchange location
Original network provider* Orange C?te d'Ivoire

Lawyers do NOT use mobile phones for serious discussions. Rather, they will have you call their office if they have one - & don't all Lawyers have grand offices with receptionists etc?

It is 100% a scam.

Thantupidr the headers info. I don't like to look really stupid, but which OPTIONS do you mean? On the hotmail page options aren't the preferences you suggest. On the INTERNET OPTIONS, there's nothing there for preferences,. Sorry to be a bore, but your idea is great, i need a little hands up on it.
Steve

Happy to help

To save myself a liitle time I have copy an pasted the relevant bits below from our sister site www.419eater.com

If you are unsure just post the headers, that is something that we cant do for you as if you forward or copy the email the header will be left behind

Hotmail
On ther upper right hand side of the screen you'll see "Options". Click on it, then go to "Mail Display Settings". Where it says "Message Headers", change the option to "Advanced". Once that's done, click on "OK" and you'll see the headers of all the emails you get sent.

Now, how to find that pesky IP address we keep talking about. Go to

http://headertool.apelord.com/headers

All you need to do with this site is copy the entire header and post it into the box. Be aware that some scammers forge the headers by using proxy servers, so you're not always going to get the result you expected. If that's the case, then try Googling it to see what other results you can find.

WHEN YOU POST THE HEADERS MAKE SURE YOU REMOVE YOUR OWN DETAILS OUT OF IT OR YOU'LL BE TARGETTED BY EVEN MORE SPAMMERS AND SCAMMERS!!

In defence of steven447, I too have never been able to see the headers in Live.com or hotmail email accounts.

For whatever reasons there simply is no "Preferences " or "Mail Display Settings" link appearing after clicking on Options. Does anybody have any other suggestions?

Peta's right, I can't find it either. Hmm, I'd like to because it can be followed thru the 'ape' procedure above - good work. Now if we can just get the sequence right. Thank you all.
Steve

Crispy, thank you for your research. I don't know how to do that. I'd sure like to get the 'header' business straight. Steve

Hmmmm. Not being a 'hotmail' or 'live' user, I've just set-up an account, sent myself a mail etc - & cannot see how to find the headers

I will continue 'playing' to see if it is possible, but finding information is difficult.

Perhaps it is Ms being secretive so I will contact them as well.

I appreciate it is not simple, but I have found this:

How to view email headers in Hotmail Classic?
(If you login to your email using Windows Live then follow the instructions outlined in the next paragraph.)

• Log into Hotmail.
• Click on "Options" tab on the top navigation bar.
• Under Options you will see the following message, "You are using the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail. Have a fast connection and want more features? Try the full version to see message previews in your inbox. (It's free, too.)"
• Click on the "Try the full version" link.
• Click on "I want the Free Upgrade..", button
• To view the full email message header, right click the email message displayed in your list of messages. A menu will pop-up. Click on the View source option in this menu, and a new window will open. This window will display the full email headers.

How to view email headers in Windows Live Hotmail ?

When you log into your email account please check to make sure that you are not using the Classic version of Windows Live Hotmail. If you are using the classic version then you need to choose the full version to view headers. To choose the full version follow the steps below.
• Click on "Options" tab on the top navigation bar.
• Under Options you will see the following message, "You are using the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail. Have a fast connection and want more features? Try the full version to see message previews in your inbox. (It's free, too.)"
• Click on the "Try the full version" link.
• Click on "I want the Free Upgrade..", button
• The new Windows Live Hotmail looks and functions very much like Microsoft Outlook. To view the full email message header, right click the email message displayed in your list of messages. A menu will pop-up. Click on the View source option in this menu, and a new window will open. This window will display the full email headers.

I have just tried it & can see the headers of the message I sent from my gmail account

You can switch back to 'Hotmail Classic' by clicking on 'Options'.

Learning something new everyday