I am deeply troubled by an early morning visit from an elderly neighbour in a state of some agitation.

My neighbour has received a letter on un-headed notepaper allegedly from a South African barrister.

It details (in very poor grammar) a tale in which the fake barrister alleges that my neighbour is entitled to a share of several millions of dollars following the accidental death of a multi-millionaire.

The scammer applies immediate pressure by absolutely insisting that my neighbour contact the barrister and provide all their personal details and a telephone number that my neighbour will be able to answer 24 hours a day.

You can imagine the amount of threat pressure that the scammer would be able to deploy if my neighbour made this contact and supplied the details as instructed.

This is a "bait" form of scam and the routes that this might take could be many - but the bottom line would be ultimately that the intended victim would find that they would be pressed into paying an up-front sum of money (and given their techniques the scammers would quickly establish how much a victim could be swindled out of).

419 scammers are not nice people, they are thieves, liars, and generally very nasty, therefore you can expect the use of every con technique if a victim should make that initial response.

This activity is vile and we need to take care that the vulnerable in our community do not fall for this kind of con and find themselves robbed of their savings.

My neighbour's letter was perfectly addressed (with a fairly unique first name) and it might be assumed that the scammers got the name and address from some official source like the electoral register.

Whilst I see fairly regular e-mails of this type, this is the first I have witnessed that has used the postal system. It may be the case that the swindlers believe their intended victims may be more susceptible to this type of approach.

We need to watch out for our more elderly family, friends and neighbours who may be receiving these through the post.

Well said.
I know logic tells you to just ignore this sort of thing many very elderly get confused.

Agree, but we all have to actually look out for all our neighbours to try to make sure this doesn't duping happen to them, but how many of us honestly do?
How many of us would actually go to them if we needed help?
How many would respond to knock late at night or go round to check neighbours are ok on a regular basis? How many regularly communicate with neighbours?

Would like to live near jgdoherty

And it's not only older people that can be confused btw

Big love

http://www.met.police.uk/fraudalert/419.htm

I hope you advised your neighbour to forward the letter to the local police fraud unit - this type of thing is unfortunately widespread

Also if you get phishing emails, you should forward a copy to the real organisation purporting to be the sender. Most of them have special emails specifically for this purpose on their websites, usually om their "contact us page".

My neighbour has elected to pass the offending letter to CID in Lewisham.

A good decision I feel, particularly if the scammers have focussed their attention locally.