Ontario Man Succumbs to an Online ‘Inheritance’ Fraud

A man from Canada's Ontario says that he is indebted to various people of over $150,000 after an e-mail scam running by international scam artists made him believe that he was close to receiving a fortune. However, the episode turned out to be a phishing scam that Nigerian online fraudsters maneuvered to trap the unsuspecting man.

John Rempel, aged 22, who was unemployed, trapped in an Internet fraud when he got a scam e-mail from phishing fraudsters telling him he was about to inherit $12.8 Million from a distant relative who passed away in London in a bomb blast.

While Rempel didn't have a family relationship with the dead man, he trusted the phishing message and wired money as fees to deposit the inheritance into his bank account.

Moreover, while the episode began with an initial $2,500 as money wired for the transfer of the fortune, it soon became uncontrollable when attorney Matthew Spencer claiming to represent the expired relative demanded thousand of dollars. The reason attorney gave was that money was required to open bank accounts along with about $25,000 as tax payment for the 'fortune' Rempel was going to inherit. Unwitting Rempel even went to London to see the attorney whom he handed over a cash amount of $10,000 in addition to the amount he previously wired online.

However, the whole phishing fraud developed into Rempel finding himself tormented with massive debts on his credit card(s) and borrowings of substantial sums from relatives to inherit the property.

An investigating official said that earlier, these scam messages arrived in postal mail. But now most of them are sent via electronic mail, in tune with all the new technologies available, as reported by THE WINDSOR STAR on January 14, 2009.

Meanwhile, the case of a person losing massive amounts of money in an Internet phishing scam is not new. A UK-based man similarly lost over £100,000 in an online fraud that involved the Nigerian scammers.

Related article: Ontarians Need to Remain Cautious Online

» SPAMfighter News - 1/27/2009