My conversation with a Nigerian Facebook friend

I made a new friend recently on Facebook. He had the same name and portrait as a friend whose profile says that he lives in Springboro, Ohio. Yet he was “Using Messenger without Facebook” and “Logged in using a phone number from Nigeria” and “Different from your Facebook friend Dale McCall” (most of this in grayed-out letters that a lot of folks would probably miss).

Some highlights:

  • my new friend got one of the first Gulfstream G500s and, on top of that, was able to get it “delivered to my door step”
  • he believed it to be a two-week, 200-mile trip (at less than 1 mph) from Springboro (Ohio) to “Ohio”
  • when I offered to ship Dale my unneeded obsolete iPhone 6, he asked me to send it to Lynda Ham Stephenson, 22517 Wolfridge Rd, Killeen, Texas 76549. He then said that he would drive there from Springboro to pick it up

I can’t find a good way to export a single Facebook Messenger thread as HTML or plain text, so unfortunately you must view the exchange as a collection of screen shots.

Readers: Why did my new friend want my Verizon Wireless username/password? What use can be made of it in Nigeria?

7 thoughts on “My conversation with a Nigerian Facebook friend

  1. Could it be to port your number and run password resets an all of your phone number linked accounts?

  2. Two step auth could be breached is your phone and the VW are somehow linked. No idea ‘how’, but that springs to mind as one reason for it.

  3. That was fun to read. Thanks for sharing.

    I get unwanted calls on my cell phone and every now and then I would play along. As an example, when I get a call about saving on my “electric bill”, I would play along as long as I can and then I would give them some odd addresses such as the White House. Or when they ask how if I have such and such or if I’m the home owner, I would answer with long pauses and very short answers such as “yes”, “no”, “I think so”, “give me a minute to look it up”, etc.

    See this video [1] and you will get an idea of what I mean.

    The best one I had was with someone trying to alert me about viruses on my “Windows PC” and how they can fix it for me. I would play along as a dump PC user who don’t know how to move the mouse around.

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXVJ4JQ3SUw

  4. You have all the interesting friends. Mine just want to fix my back pain with Medicare-paid joint braces.

  5. Lynda from Texas could be a potential fraud victim too. “Dave” could have received money from her for the iPhone. Or he could ask her to send him money after delivery.

    These fraud schemes could be very elaborate. For example, I remember reading about the following:

    Victim notices an ad on eBay – “brand new iPhone in original package!” for very cheap. The victim is suspicious, but the seller says “don’t worry, no need to pay yet, I’ll send you an iPhone right away, you check it and only after that you pay me”. And this is exactly what happens. Perfectly new phone arrives, and the victim happily sends money to seller.

    However, the iPhone was purchased by a stolen credit card, from Amazon, directly to victim’s address. And soon enough police knocks on victim’s door, because the address is linked to fraudulent transaction.

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