SF saves souls!

[watervole]

As most of you will know, I'm chair of Redemption, an SF convention held every other year in February.

This year, we've had a sudden rush of memberships from Nigeria. Being of a suspicious nature (and not wanting to risk getting landed with cost of a booked hotel room for someone who fails to show), I asked one of them a


What is your current address, even if it is only a temporary one? (I asked this as the credit card address didn't match the country where the payment was made, which suggests a stolen card)

What are your main SF interests and why?

Here's his reply:

Currently I reside in nigeria, but I usaully travel overseas.
I am a redeem church worker.

My interest in coming to the Redemption for the convention is to have the total grace to achieve words and advices at the camp during the convention on my life and also to request for Lord's grace to abide by his rules and not to backslide.

I wish to be at the redemption convention centre over there by the Grace of God almighty.

Thank you very much and wishing to hearing from you soon.

-------------------

You'd think someone trying to sneak into England would at least have the sense to read the web site!

Comments

[julesjones]

He will probably turn out to have no way of paying for it other than by some method which involves him overpaying you by some hundreds or thousands of dollars, and you paying the excess to some third party to whom he happens to also owe money. Needless to say, the bank draft or whatever it is that you receive will turn out to be forged, and both he and the third party will have vanished. It's a variant of the 419 or Nigerian fraud, and a fairly common fraud on the "for sale second-hand" newsgroups - a friend of mine ran into this one while trying to sell something.

[lonemagpie.livejournal.com]

Actually ours seem to be more some sort of scam to get illegal immigrants into the country- I'm guessing the one with the credit card is here, and trying to find an excuse to bring a shipload of friends and family in so they can disappear the instant they hit the beaches. (Nigerians seem to be taking over a lot of London corner-shops, leading one Pakistani comic I saw on TV the other day to bemoan them "coming over here and taking our jobs")

[watervole.livejournal.com]

It's almost certainly an immigration scam. They all paid by credit card, the first one over two months ago (I waited to see if it bounced before allowing anything to be mailed to him).

I've refunded the cards. If they're stolen, at least the original owner won't be too out of pocket.

My problem is that they're booking hotel rooms and I don't want to risk us having to pay for those rooms when they fail to show. Nor do I want to risk chargebacks on stolen cards after we've finalised our accounts.

PS. Why is the usual scam called a 419?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

From the relevent section of the Nigerial legal code.

MC

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

oops, even the Nigerian legal code.

[lonemagpie.livejournal.com]

Except they're not getting hotel rooms booked - I haven't put any of them through, and their deposit is refunded with the rest of their payment.