Are Thais being scammed?

[Riley'sLife]

I use my wife’s Skype account and, maybe because of her Thai name, in the last few weeks I have had a number of contact requests (perhaps 8 or 9) from people purporting to be Generals, or other high ranking soldiers, doctors, etc., all in the U.S. Armed Forces serving in Afghanistan.

They are all quite obviously imposters. They always start with "Hi, how are you?" and then state, "I want to be your friend". Any response will evoke a lengthy delay followed by very simple, one word replies from people clearly having limited English Language skills!!

I have an image in my mind of teams of Nigerians attempting contact with Thai sounding names on Skype.

Have scammers recently been having success with gullible Thais?

Anyone else had the same experience? - or heard of any scams effecting Thais using Skype?

[Soutpeel]

does your wife know you are using her Skype account ?

[Scottythai]

Well I will bring this to light. And it's something i have done in my free time. Check out a website called Scambait. If you have a bit of free time on your hands it shows how to drive them crazy with the responses you give the scammer. I have had 2 such requests and played along with one for quite some time.

[DiNiro]

This sounds like a scam. Be extremely careful with your personal information.

Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I got your contact from the International web site directory.
I must not hesitate to confide in you for this simple and sincere business.

My father was a very wealthy cocoa merchant in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast, before he was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outing to discus on a business deal.

Before the death of my father on 30th June 2012 in a private hospital here in Abidjan

He secretly called me on his bedside and told me that he has a sum of $15.5M in a suspense account with one of the Bank here in Abidjan, that he used my name as his only Son for the next of kin in deposit of the fund. My Father also explained to me that it was because of this wealth and some huge amount of money his business associates supposed to balance him from the deal they had, that was why he was poisoned to by his business associates, that I should seek for a God fearing foreign partner in a country of my choice where I will transfer this money and use it for investment purpose.

Dear One I am honorably seeking your assistance in the following ways.
1) To provide a Bank account where this money would be transferred to.
2) To serve as the guardian of this since I am a Boy of 19 years.

Moreover, I am willing to offer you 20% of the sum as compensation for effort input after the successful transfer of this fund to your designate account overseas.

If you are interested on this deal kindly get back to me.
Thanks and God Bless.

[kkerry]

You need to set your privacy settings so you can only be contacted by people in your Contact list...and make the contents of your profile visible only to your verified contacts. Do that and all the scammers and time wasters will disappear.

[Riley'sLife]

does your wife know you are using her Skype account ?

I know exactly what your point is!

I set up the account for my wife and I to talk to her, and my, family overseas. No point in us having separate accounts. Thanks anyway

[Riley'sLife]

This sounds like a scam. Be extremely careful with your personal information.

I guarantee it's a scam.

[Soutpeel]

does your wife know you are using her Skype account ?

I know exactly what your point is!

I set up the account for my wife and I to talk to her, and my, family overseas. No point in us having separate accounts. Thanks anyway

You dont know exactly what my point was.....my point was, If someone was snooping on my account or using my private account I would be p*ssed, ......both myself and my wife have a single skype account and it names both of us and is used for the exact reason your using it for...

seems now you have changed the story...and you said in your OP...your wifes skype account, not "our" account

[Rust Never Sleeps]

My G/F had the same problem on her Skype.

Go to Tools-Options- Privacy Settings.

And under the immediate three settings below-Click on people in my contact list only.

You might also like to make sure the three boxes below these settings are not ticked.(not sure if this has any relation to your problem,but I cannot see any

usefulness in these boxes being ticked).

Just tell your G/F if she does understand what she is reading,DONT CLICK.My G/F thought Echo 123 was a real woman.

[nottocus]

Maybe the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanna meet ur missus for some war games.

[katana]

I can recall a couple of stories Thai girls have told me in the last year where men befriended them on the internet and then tried to scam them for money. Although the men displayed their pic, they refused to appear on cam.
As I recall the scam usually involved some sort of attempted seduction and sweet talk over a period of time which culminated in the man sending a gift like an ipad that was alledgedly stuck at customs and would be released if some money was sent by the girl.