By REUVEN BLAU and JILL CULORA
Posted: 4:26 am
July 20, 2008
Nigerian e-mail scammers are preying on the patriotism of Americans by posing as US Marines.
A con artist using the name Capt. Cole Morgan has flooded inboxes with e-mails in recent weeks seeking help to "evacuate" more than $12 million from Baghdad to the United States.
The grammar-challenged missive claims the Marine and his pals discovered the loot hidden in barrels near one of Saddam Hussein's old presidential palaces.
It solicits someone willing to receive his $12.57 million share in return for 30 percent of the profits and requires personal identification information including passport numbers, insisting the data is for "acquaintance purposes ONLY."
It claims "with the help of a German diplomat contact working with the UN here (his office enjoys some immunity) I was able to get the package out to a safe location."
To add insult to injury, the e-mail says the soldier lost his family on 9/11. "I love my wife and kids with great passion," he writes. "But I lost them at the 9/11 bomb blast, I feel bad talking about them because it was their death that motivated me to fight terrorism being a US Marine."
This despite the fact that no soldiers' children died on 9/11.
He also claims to have survived two suicide-bomb attacks at Camp Victory.
Edward Olivo, a Marine spokesman, told the Post that there is no Capt. Cole Morgan in the Marines.
Based on two photographs from the e-mailer forwarded to the Marine Corps - including one of what appears to be a group of Marines gazing at stacks of bills placed on a table - Olivo said, "We have no idea who these people are. But I can be certain they are not Marines, by the uniform they're wearing."
The man in the photograph is wearing old-style camouflage fatigues, Olivo said, while Marines stationed in the Middle East wear an updated tan digital pattern.
A source check of the e-mail's individual Internet protocol address and location revealed that it had been sent from Lagos, Nigeria.
Authorities around the world have busted scores of Nigerian Internet scams over the past several years. But the con has likely fleeced hundreds of people out of thousands of dollars.
The e-mail is being reviewed by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Olivo said.
Additional reporting by Eugene Pan
