'WAFMU' IS THIS A NEW ONE?

[greendrop]

I posted t shirts left over from a promo for sell on net. Contacted by a business (yes located in Togo), sent samples, sent invoice..all agreed. The day the payment was to be wired I got e mail from 'The West African Funds Monitoring Unit' stating the wire was stopped as there was no proof such as 'airbill', etc that the $ was not for fraud, or terrorist activity. Then BTCI banque e mailed me similar message. Jist is I am suppose to send .05% of the invoice total first to clear the wire transfer. I have not done and now company is offering to pay 1/2 of fee if I pay the other and I have started getting phone calls.. The last e mail I got from 'WAFMU' was a little threatening and demanded an apology from me because I questioned thier existance. They are telling me this is a new government formed/backed group put in place to monitor/limit all the scams & frauds coming from the area. Could this be? I did a search on 'WAFMU' and came up with nothing. The deal for the t shirts is not any kind of great deal, I am not really making any money so it is not a 'too good to be true' type thing.
Anyone seen any kind of scam like this before? Any opinions or knowledge appreciated. Thanks

[Daneel]

The use of the term WAFMU is probably all that is new about it :) The rest is typical 419 scammer tactics. Offering to pay half of the fee (if they were legit, why only half?) and threatening/intimidating their intended victims is common as dirt.

This email you got from the BTCI banque probably came from some kind of free email address. If you post it here (preferably with full headers (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=585) :) ) that can be easily confirmed. If it didn't come from a free email address then that means they set up a domain to impersonate a bank, and we can usually get those shut down, costing the scammers a bit of hard cash.

I would recommend you ignore any further emails you get from them. If they call, just hang up. No reason to be polite.

[greendrop]

Thanks for the reply...the e mail address was btci_tg@gawab.com. The attachment was on full letterhead. I have not seen any examples in your files that seem close to what I have gotten, should I send this site copies of the forms I have been sent? Thank You

[Shamfien]

I really think that is enough information.

The banks email address is "btci_tg@gawab.com"
www.gawab.com is a free email provider(like hotmail.com or walla.com)
Banks will havetheir own domain name and do not use a free email address.

You can sign up for an email address like elvis@gawab.com
This makes them as much of a bank as it would make you elvis ;)

I am sure that you will now be contacted by the FBI
(theFBI@yahoo.com)

[Miyuki]

Welcome to FW, greendrop. It's a scam, and the best thing is to ignore anything else that comes from them.

[joewein]

Hello Greendrop,

it's an import scam where a large order is used as bait to get the supplier send cash upfront to the gang running the scam. It is most common in Benin but has also been reported in other countries in West Africa such as Nigeria, Cameroon and Togo.

Google still finds exactly ZERO hits on "West African Funds Monitoring Unit", which shows that this is a new twist on an old scam. If it was either legitimate or if the use of this fake instution was more established then you would find reports either way.

[greendrop]

Thanks for the info. I really appreciate the advice. I was really hoping to get rid of these T shirts, but I would rather be stuck with them than scammed!