New Frontier on Nigerian Scams - Hotels and Real Estate

I have posted here earlier on internet scams and the different ways they employ to dupe Average Joe of his money. It's a pity that most scams originate in Nigeria and I almost burnt my fingers once on eBay trying to make my first sale. What seemed legit business would have resulted in me shipping the item to an address in Nigeria without ever getting to see my payment. I was so happy on making a successful sale that I 'almost' overlooked the fact that the confirmation email did not originate from PayPal at all! Lucky save for me. If you are interested in finding out about the other methods used to cheat people, this post might be a good starting point.

Not to be left behind in the Web 2.0 phenomenon, the scammers have upped their techniques of duping people. The latest one, reported here, is an unsolicited email from someone (apparently) in the UK interested in making a real estate investment in your country. The very fact that the email is unsolicited should raise an alarm. If it doesn't, for some reason, consider the following:

No prior acquaintance

Person willing to invest in huge property (like a 5-Star hotel)

Unnecessary stress on 'Honesty'

Critical illness angle - shouldn't the person be looking forward to passing his family wealth to the next-of-kin at this point?

And here's what readers like you can do to help Average Joe - Spread the word. The strongest line of defense against 'new and improved' scam techniques is to get people informed as soon as a new technique is discovered. SunSeven also lists 16 ways in which scammers get access to your email ids.