BBC West African Fraud documentary

[Jimbo82]

Dear all,

I am writing from 'Real Story with Fiona Bruce', a weekly current affairs programme broadcast nationally on Mondays at 7.30pm on BBC One www.bbc.co.uk/realstory.

We are making a half hour programme dealing programme about some of the issues surrounding West African fraud. We would like to get in contact with anyone based in the UK whose life has been touched by computer fraud and identity theft. Of course the nature of this sort of crime can make it a difficult subject to discuss, so we are looking to tackle it with the utmost sensitivity and discretion.

In trying to better understand the emotional impact of computer crime, we hope it will help make the world a little wiser to the dangers of '419' emails, lottery scams and data theft.

If you think you might be available for a short phone chat, please call me on my desk phone from 10am to 6pm on 0161 2443897. If you would prefer to communicate by email, please contact me on james.ballardie@bbc.co.uk.

As yet we have no firm transmission date for the programme but the likelihood is that it will be broadcast in June.

For obvious reasons, this forum will no doubt be hosting some of the more skeptical net users out there, so if you are in doubt, please contact the BBC Manchester switchboard on 0161 200 2020 and ask to speak to James Ballardie on Real Story. The BBC Manchester switchboard number is also available on its website www.bbc.co.uk/manchester

Best regards,

James Ballardie
Real Story,
BBC Manchester,
New Broadcasting House,
Oxford Road,
Manchester,
M60 1SJ

Mod Edit: Corrected the link for proper display - MH

[FW Admin]

Thank you, Jimbo, and welcome to FraudWatchers! :)

We all firmly believe that education and outreach is the best form of attack against these crimes, and this initiative will certainly go a long way towards reaching that objective.

FraudWatchers.org is at your disposal for any information that you may require.

[rooney33]

Hello,
I'm new to this but I am writing to tell you I received about $22,000 this week in money orders, checks and Travelers Checks. I also have some addresses and phone numbers and websites.
I am thankful that I had since enough to checkout these payments before trying to deposit them. I did make copies, also. Today, I received another $6200 in money orders that I haven't got a chance to turn in yet. If anyone is interested in the info I have just let me know.

[Frazzle]

Rooney33,

Don't even think about depositing those fake checks.

Fake bank websites can be reported at www.aa419.org -- they're expert at closing them down.

Street addresses are worthless... they're always false.

Phone numbers and email addresses are pretty much worthless -- they're always anonymous.

It sounds like you're doing what we call "scambaiting" (and quite good at it!). You can find other people interested in this at www.scambaits.com

[Rob]

I reckon that this is outdated - can we unstickify this?

[FW Admin]

Good call... de-stickied.