Pursuant to https://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewt ... 588b3dceba, I decided to reply as if I wasn't just some hapless schmuck who came across an easy, lazy business deal, but an actual project manager who works as a partner in a business consulting firm, Textile Madison Consulting, down there in Atlanta.
At this point I was sure the scammer was going to run, or try and find some way to "trick" Brian into bringing him a victim. For a day or two he didn't seem to respond, so Brian followed up with:Ammamy Conde,
I am glad that you reached out to me. As fortune would have it, I'm a NIPMP Level 10 certified project management professional. I am highly qualified in the work of the planning, implementation, oversight, conclusion, and analysis of Mountebank Class A projects such as the below.
Can you provide me with an estimate as to the total value of this project for your firm and the time estimate for which you'd potentially like to employ my firm for this project?
Do you have any certifications on the diamonds or crude oil regarding their chain of custody? You mentioned also a QandQ certificate, please also include this in the documentation.
I'd also appreciate a list of contacts for this project. If you have a project manager on your end, they would be a fantastic place to start, but it would be nice to know who is also under technical management and implementation as well as who will be overseeing the quality control as per your QandQ certification requirements. It may also help me to know who all the field supervisors shall be so that I may contact them directly if there is a production and management flow problem.
Another thing I'd appreciate is an estimate on the size of your team. I can promise you that if you engage me and my services you will have 20 very skilled and highly qualified project management professionals. I don't wish to brag but I have perhaps the best people in this professional industry of management professional managers on offer.
We are also experts on securing funding for projects that need seed capital to get off the ground. Nothing stops success like empty pockets, after all. We can discuss funding and how to bring in an investment once we manage to work out the details of this project and our respective roles in this matter.
In case you're worried about how much my firm might bill you for this, I will assure you that we will not charge you for our services until one of three conditions are met:
1. For short- to medium-term projects: Project completion under the terms of the contract.
2. For long-term project: Achievement of the first major milestone laid out under the contract. Due to the long-term nature of the project, we would be billing on each milestone to ensure the firm continues to gain a fair capital for my firm.
3. Project cancellation: We hope never to see this happen, as your success makes our firm look good. As such, we'd only charge you a discounted fee that would match the amount of work output given on the project. The earlier the project is cancelled, the less we would charge. Please take note that cancellation past a certain completion percentage will prevent this option from taking effect and you will be charged as if the project is completed.
For now, this is to be treated as a consultation, which my firm offers free of charge and will only incur costs upon the signature of contract.
Please, let me know if you would like to proceed with the consultation.
Looking forward to working with you,
Brian Wadley
Textile Madison Consultants
Atlanta, GA
This email is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please inform the sender of your receipt of this message and then delete it. Unauthorized use of this message may incur fines or prison time at the discretion of local, federal, or international magistrates or judges.
To my surprise, Almmamy actually did come back!Ammamy Conde,
I am quickly following up to see if I can measure your interest in my services. If you have any questions about the below or wish to engage me, simply reply to this email. I am always interested in serious business partners and your success means our success.
Brian Wadley
Textile Madison Consultants
Atlanta, GA
This email is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please inform the sender of your receipt of this message and then delete it. Unauthorized use of this message may incur fines or prison time at the discretion of local, federal, or international magistrates or judges.
Attached to this email was a PDF that looks like some sort of manifest for a vessel or something. I honestly couldn't make heads or tails of it, though the signature definitely was one that didn't match the person they are impersonating. If anyone is interested in the PDF, I'd be interested to know a good anonymous place I could put the PDF for perusal.
I like to think the scammer actually took time to type this out, but I suspect this was also a copy-paste job.
Of course, since I'm not a project manager nor an actual business consultant, I did have to look up some of these initialisms. Still no idea what an "FCO" is, but he's asking for a letter of intent (Basically wants a piece of paper saying I'll buy his crap.) and that he has crude oil in a ship somewhere, which I imagine is what the PDF is all about.Hello,
Thanks for your response and interest to build a valid business relationship with our company, I work for GRAND PLUS MINING INTERNATIONAL, an independent mining, extraction and collection corporation that owns gold and diamonds mining interest in more than 7 producing countries in West Africa, also we have crude oil export interest and we also collect renewable metal scrap for export, presently we have gold and diamonds finely collected from all our different mines and stored in the bank in Republic of Togo for trade and export purposes. I can assure you that as of today we have over 3100kg of gold in the form of bars, nuggets and dust and we have 25,000carats uncut diamonds in the bank here in the Republic of Togo. We also own one of the biggest scrap yards in Lome and in our scrap yard we have HMS 1 and 2, used rails, copper scrap, aluminum scrap and used batteries.
Our company signed a bilateral contract with the producing communities in the rural areas to bring development to the producing soil as a mutual partnership for the peaceful coexistence of our company and the host communities, due to that we have many developmental projects going on in those rural areas and our board have decided to use our offers to the advantage of those on going projects, that means that we are ready to using 30% of the contract value of any successful export of gold and diamonds to importing urgently needed goods, items or services for the progress of the developmental projects that we are doing in those rural areas and we are interested as well to importing mining equipment to enhance more production in our mining activities, so in each contract or successful shipment we execute, we will use 30% of the contract value to import goods and services from your country or region back to Africa and we will like to work hand in hand with you in doing that.
Review the attached files for the gold, diamonds, renewable metal scrap offers and petroleum analysis, we have BLCO presently in the vessel in Togo waters and we are ready to welcome serious buyers to come down for the inspection and evaluation of our offers, signing of contracts and perfecting shipment consequently and we are seeking for long term working relationship. For our gold and diamonds, the buyer pays 5% after inspection and evaluation then we process all the standard export documents to accompany the shipment which our board will appoint our representative to fly back with buyer coordinate to buyer's destination for the final refinery settlement.
We also offer 3% to 5% as commission to eligible intermediaries per successful transaction and we are ready to issue mandate appointments and sign NCNDA with our intermediary.
Review our FCO sign and send in your LOI and your scanned passport.
Best Regards,
Almmamy Conde,
Export & Sales Manager,
GRAND PLUS MINING INTERNATIONAL
Telephone: +228 99 05 34 95.
Whatsapp: +228 96 99 50 69
Fortunately, since my character is just a business consultant project manager superhero, he doesn't actually have to know anything about the resource industry, since his job is to get the scammer in touch with someone who is...
And that's where the bait stands as of now. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I plan to steer him to another scambaiting mailbox to someone who Brian thinks is an expert, but who probably will be just some upper management fool who doesn't know anything about the industry he's working in. Though I could definitely use pointers here since the scammer almost looks like they're trying to call my bluff by sounding really smart.Almmamy Conde,
As explained in my initial contact with you, we will not be the final contact in acquiring these resources, but instead provide consultation and project management services as a go-between and your final contact. As such, my firm will not be the one for which you will seek the LOI for acquisition of your materials. The only part my firm would play in this transaction is manifold:
1. We will oversee the conduct of your project within the terms of an agreement you will make with the final party.
2. We will assist you in finding your final customer for your materials. As you probably might have gathered, we here at Textile Madison are not in your industry and as such will not be making the purchase of your product or materials. Business consultants don't need gold or diamonds, just work commitment and strategy documents.
3. Once you secure the LOI with our client, we will work with you to put together a NCPAP, together with your project manager or point manager, any field managers and supervisors you have, as well as whichever director within your company will have overall responsibility for the project. At which point we will work out the milestones your workers will need to meet to satisfy the demands of our client, which would be your end client.
If you are worried about finding an end client or buyer, I would like to assure you that one of the services we perform for a fee is the location of the same. As I mentioned before, it's with them you will need to secure an LOI and digital identification or signature verification.
We will retain the document PDF you sent us as that will allow us to potentially narrow down to a client that will make both of our firms happy. However, your message mentioned files in the plural, yet you only attached one PDF. If you would be so kind as to supply the rest of the documents you have mentioned in this correspondence, we will be able to aid you further.
Brian Wadley
Textile Madison Consultants
Atlanta, GA
This email is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please inform the sender of your receipt of this message and then delete it. Unauthorized use of this message may incur fines or prison time at the discretion of local, federal, or international magistrates or judges.
Where shall I go with this?