I was recently made aware of attacks being directed against Christian websites by international con-artists. I found out about it because this website was among those targeted.

For over ten years there has been a crime ring operating out of Nigeria that has been stealing tens of millions of dollars from people and businesses all over the world. Recently, they began sending emails to Christian Ministries and websites, with some very convincing stories and trying to get enough sensitive information to be able to drain personal and corporate bank accounts. Where they can not do that, they try to lure the respondent to Nigeria, one of its border countries, or countries where their operations are more secure.

I am adding this page to my website to alert other Christians to the threat. If you receive a letter or email similar in any way to what is described below, just delete it. Do not waste your time corresponding to these people. Both the FBI and the United States Secret Service say that this crime ring is very dangerous, and their people are very violent. They have killed at least one American, and more people from other countries have died at their hands.

On September 26, 2003 I received an email from someone in Nigeria claiming to be a Barrister (Lawyer). Since I created this website, I have become used to receiving email from all over the world from people who have visited my site. But this correspondent claimed he had a lot of money, which he wanted to give to my ministry. Yet this email was from someone I had never heard of, and it was not even addressed to me or my website. Instead there was an email nom-de-plume in the "To:" box, with a Christian heading in the "Subject:" box. It looked to me like I had somehow received an  email that was actually intended for someone else.

I responded back to the writer, telling him that I had received his email by mistake because I was not the addressee. He responded back to me that the email WAS intended for me. So I went back to his original email and read that he claimed to represent the estate of a wealthy English couple in Nigeria who died without heirs. They had bequeathed their fortune to Christian Ministries.

He went on in that email to say that he had embezzled the money from the estate after the death of his clients. He then told how he subsequently accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior through watching a Benny Hinn program on television. He further described how after reading his Bible he began to feel conviction over his sin of stealing the inheritance away from Christian ministries, and his search for the appropriate Ministry to give the inheritance to led him to my website. The story was worded like the writer had really gone through a legitimate conversion experience.

The writing sounded like English was a second language to the writer, but it contained a good telling of a Christian salvation testimony. I remained suspicious, but I wondered if there was any way this could be real. If it is real, then it is too good to be true.

My experience has always been, "if it is too good TO BE TRUE, then it is most likely TOO GOOD to be true." My ministry and website is self-supported. I hold a job as a government accountant to pay both personal living expenses as well as the expenses of our Ministry, and I do not solicit donations from my readers. We call this style of ministry a "tent-making" ministry, referring to the Apostle Paul's ministry at Corinth where he manufactured tents to support himself and his ministry. A large bequest would have been nice because it could enable me to be back in the ministry full time. But my Nigerian correspondent began asking for sensitive information that I was not comfortable committing to email. We exchanged email six times, each time he told me that he felt more sure that my ministry was the right choice for this inheritance. I really wanted to know if this could possibly be legitimate.

I started accessing public records over the internet to see what I could find out about this man. I thought that if this were some kind of confidence game, he might have already been mentioned on law enforcement sites. But my correspondent, himself, gave me the clue I needed to confirm that it was all just a scam to separate me from my money. A second copy of his first email showed up in my "Inbox". It was, word for word, the same email I had received at the start, but addressed to a different recipient (still not me), and mailed from a different email profile than the first one. It was evident that he was doing mass mailings using the very same email template for everyone.

It was clear to me that this was something the authorities needed to be notified about. I started with the FBI. They were well aware of the fraud, because it has been around for so long and has drained tens of millions of dollars from American bank accounts every year.

The agent I spoke to confirmed that the emails did originate from Nigeria and that this was actually part of a larger crime ring. The FBI normally tells people just to delete the email from their computers. But since there were numerous emails that went back and forth between the confidence artist and myself, they gave me the phone number of our local United States Secret Service office. I both talked with an agent, and forwarded all of the email along to the SS task force that is handling this fraud for the United States.

Both the FBI and Secret Service stressed with me the importance of educating the public about this crime. For that reason I have created this page. This is very timely, because the use of the internet by this Nigerian crime ring is picking up momentum. And the assault upon Christians, Christian Ministries and websites is a relatively new incarnation of an older scam.

If you receive any email similar in any way to what I have described, do not answer it. Just delete it off of your computer, and trust the Lord to supply for you in other ways. The just live by faith, not by huge bequests.