Tembi is a self employed business woman in South Africa.

She received an email asking her to make a bid to a government department to supply a number of specialist water pumps. Tembi guessed it was a scam message even though her name and contact details are registered on a government web site for suppliers.

However, the next day, a lady phoned to chase up the email and convince Tembi to put in a bid to supply the units.

Tembi agreed and filled in the necessary forms and filed them at the address specified. She was awarded the contract and she purchased the items and had them delivered as instructed.

This deal was worth about US $15,000.

Another person supposedly from the same government office then phoned Tenbi and congratulated her on successful delivery on time asked her to supply a much larger consignment of items and that she would paid for both deals at the same time.

Tenbi agreed, purchased the items and had them delivered to the specified address.

This deal was worth about twice the first deal.

The scammers had the items to sell and Tenbi was left with the bill to pay.

She visited the supposed government office in Pretoria and discovered many other people had fallen for the same scam. Scammers take advantage of other people’s hard work.

These scammers had clearly been very organised and kept on using the same scam on a lot of people.

You can find more such stories at http://skywomen.co.za/index.html 

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.