Hi and welcome to Scamwarners
Firstly, well done on spotting this as a scam, I know your friend has already made 2 payments but it could have been more if not for your help.
I dont have much good news for her I am affraid, but I will start with that first, the scammer is in Nigeria and not the UK as you suspected, we can tell that by the IP address which comes with every email, he is unlikely to have ever been outside of Africa and he will not be interested in travelling to harm your friend or her family.
He may make threats or he may make promises but whatever he says will be another attempt to get her to send more money and it will be a lie.
Once the money is sent to these people and picked up by them it is gone forever, there is no way of ever retrieving it, a good lawyer will tell her this but a money hungry one will try to charge her fees for services she does not need, there is simply nothing they can do for her.
Reporting it to the police is a good idea but not for the reason you would expect, they will not be able to catch them, they hide in internet cafes using fake names and fake details, in order to get one arrested they need to be physically caught in the act of scamming somebody, the police both in the US and Hungary have no jurisdiction and are powerless even if they did have resources, reporting it officially however does help with statistical data which will show governments how big a problem this is, the bigger the problem they recognise, the more they are likely to do to prevent it, and the best way to prevent it is public awareness.
There is no point intelling The UK authorities, they simply have nothing to do with it, a crime has been committed by a Nigerian, living in Nigeria to a girl living in Hungary, the man claiming to be from the UK is a complete lie
You need to tell you friend to be aware of any further emails or requests for money for any reason what soever
Scammers see past victims as an easy mark and will continue to try many different things to get her to send more money including a recovery scam, we have a section on these scams here which may help but in simple terms she will be contacted by somebody claiming to be trying to help her recover the money she lost, fees will need to be paid in order to get her money returned but this will simply be another scam, nobody will be able to get her money back.
Please do make sure she reads this thread entirely and tell her to ask us if she has any questions at all, we are here to help where we can but for now the most important thing is making sure she doesn''t send another cent to anybody at all for any reason, after that give her reassurance that she is not in any danger, she isn't regardless of what future emails may say.
Last edited by Ralph on Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
