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The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about dubious- sounding claims, and whatever else strikes our fancy. The site is also home to the Hoaxipedia (the museum's online encyclopedia of hoaxes), the Hoax Forum, and the Top 100 April Fools' Day Hoaxes.

The museum was created in 1997 by Alex Boese. He's assisted by a staff of deputy curators and docents. Alex is the author of three books, most recently Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments (which has nothing to do with hoaxes). Check out the list of the Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of All Time for a preview.

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"... You're lucky to have mailed at this time because the puppy has just been placed on adoption by one of my customers, who went on a veterinarian work transfer with the West African veterinarian commission Lagos Nigeria, West Africa. He is giving the pup up for adoption because he cant take good care of the pup due to his busy and tight state of work. All he wants is someone that's homely and with a good christian home to adopt this young and lovely human best friend."

Hi there, just wanted to let you know that I was also scammed by these guys. I seen the ad in the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne and dealt with a guy named Pastor David Brooks and he was from the whole lagos Nigeria church thing also. Just beware of any ads for English bulldogs for sale and any email addresses like or
I feel so stupid and really pissed off!
Andrea Rowe...

This is what Helen Rowe ( ) wrote when trying to scam me.

I am so sorry for the late reply.i have been out of town.
The puppy is still avilable for sell.Pictures will be emailed to you.

I am currently in Africa on a work transfer with the West Africa veterinarian commission Nigeria ,West Africa and i took the puppy along with me because there is nobody to take care of him back home.

I do want someone with love and open heart for pets to have my baby boy who is very affectionate towards children and other pets .
The puppy is with a Current vaccinations, vet exam,health certificate from a licensed vet and a written guarantee of health( 1yr). resently checked by a licensed Vet Doctor for heart, knees, skin, correct bite, and eyes.

Raised in a loving home not a Kennel,Housebroken and potty trained.
He should eat out of a pan which has a flat bottom and straight sides. use stainless steel because it lasts longer. Do not use plastic either for his food or water. he likes Nylabone and Gummabone toys but Never ever give him a rawhide toy.
And for grooming, Brush weekly and bathe as it needs also Keep his hair trimmed out of his ears and eyes.and his bedding material should range from straw or wood shavings,or beds of all types.

The most common is cotton rugs or blankets which can be washed with ease. Not much grooming is required, however a good combing.should be trimmed professionally and always make sure his ears must be checked and loose hairs must be removed from ear passages.

The earlier you start him training and consistent, the better, you can wait a while so his settled comfortably into his new home before you begin.He need not lots of exercise. Long walks, jogging, playing catch, or agility or skills trials keep it happy.l feed with Nutro's, Iam's, and Eukanuba.I can include a sample for you if you want.

These kibbles produces a nice coat, keeps the puppy round but not obese, and produces solid stools. But Do not feed him with a kibble which contains soyabeans.


Payment method is through (Western Union Money Transfer)

I will ship puppy using Delta Shipping Company.
The cost for the puppy adoption is $500 shipping included. This covers the flight cost, and roomy airline approved kennel. I will make all the arrangements, and let you know the details after the flight is booked. The puppy make it to its destination airport within 24 hours. All we need to know is which major airport you would like the puppy flown into.,The puppy will arrived safely to It new families. I would not consider air shipping if we did not feel it was very safe for the puppy.
If you are interested in taking him, Mail me your full name, address and the nearest airport where the puppy will be ship for delivery so i can forward it to my shipping company for them to confirm delivery which i know wint be a problem at all.
Thanks and God bless you,

Helen.

That is how most of their emails start, they have all been moved to Africa for their job and can no longer provide care for their pup. Why on earth would they take them there in the first place? Why get all the way there, pay for the dog to be shipped there, pay for the vacinations, go through the 10 day quarantine and then post an add to have it shipped back to someone they don't know? Come on!
The other email is that they know someone but to try to make it legit, they want to hear what kind of person you are. How can people live with themselves knowing that they are scamming poor innocent people who only want to share their lives with man's best friend! JUST DRIVES ME NUTS!! I hope they catch all of them and give them what they deserve! NOTHING!!

i found out just in time. mine was a Rev.Fitz Patrick.
(he said)
We had a very long service in the church and that is why i could not get back to you yesterday.I am ready for the shippment now and i have packaged all their kits.They will be delivered to your door and not your airport.The reason why i want the delivered to your door is to save you the stress of going to the airport for pick up.The are coming through the airline.Yes,the shippment will commence immediately after the confirmation of your payment and i will get back to you with the flight details for you to know the arrival time of the babies.I will be waiting to read from you immediately with the payment details so i can proceed with the shippment.Thank you very much and God bless you.
Rev.Fitz Patrick

okay, why would they come to my house.
ask alot of guestion, they don't like that.
they also call them babies! not puppys, keep that in mind.

Well I as well almost fell for it but I did my research and found this site, thank god I did, and thank you. What happened with me is I saw an ad in the local paper so I assumed that the person selling the dog is local, there was only an email address so I emailed them. I recieved an exact email like someone else had on this site, except the name of the seller is different. I haven't replied back to them and dont intend to, but I did call the newspaper with the ad and now there ad will no longer be advertised. Luckily I found this in time because they had just placed the ad yesterday and it was suppose to be placed for two weeks but not anymore. And thats how you fight back!

Watch out for these scammers as well!!! They are coming from all directions now!

Mesage from George Michael
George Michael [george_michael@pobox.sk]
Mesage from George Michael

Goodday my dear,

In a brief introduction, my name is George Michael. My intention of contacting you is to have a discussion with you regarding an investment that I want to build in your country. Urgently confirm the receipt of this message with your direct telephone number to enable me call you immediately and furnish you with details.

I will be waiting for your reply as you finish reading this message.

Best Regards,

George Michael

Hello all:) This is in response to all of you out there who were either ripped off or nearly ripped off by a Nigerian scam artist. This is a must read post.

WOW am I GLAD that God took me to this site before I was scammed by the notorious 'Helen Rowe'. I got the same exact email that an earlier poster (Heather) received!! ((You would think that they would have used their spell check feature. I don't think these scammers are as intelligent as we think they are since they cannot even spell!))

I had a bad feeling from the get go when my husband and I saw the ad in our local newspaper, but we have been wanting a bulldog puppy so badly that I guess we tried to give this person the benefit of the doubt. The ad stated that they needed someone for an immediate adoption of their sweet baby bulldog. They went on to say how they wanted a loving, caring person, how they don't want to part with it, etc. They said the total cost would be $500 only to cover the cost of shipping. It truly seemed genuine. The email address was

It took over a month for a response, but after a string of emails, phone conversations, and many, many red flags, we came across this site. We have come to the conclusion that there probably really is no Helen Rowe (only a fictitous entity), but a male Nigerian scam artist. We found it odd that we never had any conversations with Helen over the phone. The man (who coined himself 'Toby') spoke in extreme broken english and could barely be understood, thus my husband was the one who did the talking with 'Toby' over the phone.

We came very close to being ripped off by this man. We nearly agreed to picking him up at our local airport in two weeks, but the last call was very shady in that he insisted that we include an ADDITIONAL $200-$300 to cover the costs of new customs that were recently added the the Nigerian airports. Toby gave him a sob story of how he and his 'wife' (they don't have the same last name) are broke and cannot afford to cover the additional costs. That's when we refused to make the transaction. Toby immediately changed his tune and said that he would find a way to pay for the extras so as long as we send the $500 immediately the next day via Western Union. He insisted that it was imperative that we send the money right away. Mind you, in a prior email, they insisted that they didn't need the entire $500 upfront, but only half as a deposit because there was 'really no way to prove that we would want the puppy' in two weeks. Since this post long already, I am going to post the actual email with Toby's contact information in another post.

Read On!! . . .

They don’t give us enough room to post it all, do they? The following is the actual email that was sent to my husband and me a few days ago:

"Hi there.

We Appreciate that you understand all that i explained...thanks alot.

We would love it if you can have the money done tomorrow. That way we would know that they dog has been adopted by you and we will email the news-papers to remove it from the ad.

After that you have the money done....i also want you to think and be specific where and when you want us to ship the dog. No matter the time difference, once i get your email that you want the dog shipped, it is going to be delivered to you by the next day in the evening ok.

I have my husbands information below for you the have the money done to.

Recievers name : Toby Johnson
Recievers address : 154, alaba ave, lagos, nigeria, 23401
Test question : My Childhood Hero
Test Answer : Superman

Mail me the name and address you used as the senders name and address as used on the slip along with the MTCN Number ok.
Thanks once again for the patience and understanding God bless youu.
We wait to read from you."

Does anyone know why ALL of these scammers are supposedly from Lagos, Nigeria?? Every hit on Google that lists a Nigerian Bulldog scam is from there.

When I sit and think about how naive we were to even consider for a second that this deal could be legitimate, I laugh. I am just glad that, one, we weren't ripped off, two, I learned to always trust my gut instinct and, three, we weren't the only ones!!

There must be something we can do to spread the word about these evil people scamming innocent victims out of their money. I think it is a terrible shame that some of these people are choosing to used God's name loosely to attract potential customers. Let's not forget, God WILL judge them. Just please; NEVER consider purchasing any animal from anyone online. You really cannot trust a single soul these days.

If anyone knows of anyone to email or call regarding this scam, please let me know. I saved every email from him. I would love to get these people, namely 'Helen Rowe--aka Toby' thrown into prison.

~Aurora

I would just like to say how glad I am that a post I wrote is helping people. I didn't know the scam was so widespread, but the more people who see this, and contact the media who post these adverts, the less influence these scammers will have.
-Flora.

Boo, I doubt that this, or any other alert even in combination, will prevent these scams from working. The Nigerian bank transfer has been going on for how many decades? And it gets attention fairly often. Enough people won't get the message or believe it to keep these scammers going for a long time. When I spoke with the FBI about a scam email concerning winning an online lottery the special agent I spoke with told of a guy who wanted to know if he had to pay taxes on the money, even after the agent had explained (several times) that he wouldn't get any money.

Oh, yes. I know that this won't stop (or even significantly slow) these scammers. I just meant that I'm glad some people who were about to go through with this transaction have found the site and realised the truth of it.

OK Boo, that's good. My experiences were always after a warning and I never fell for the scam. Fell for other scams when I was younger, but those were face-to-face and pre-internet.

Question:
Does anyone know why ALL of these scammers are supposedly from Lagos, Nigeria??

Answer:
There was an article I read at one time about this. They're not only from Nigeria, but Cameroon and other West African nations. The people are poor, can't find reputable jobs. It's kind of set up like the mafia. There are these groups where someone's the head of the scam. They recruit very poor people to work under them, and whatever the poor people make, they give a percentage to the head guy. The Nigerian government has laws in place, but due to the amount of these scams that come out, it seems to me they're not enforcing them too hard, or the can't enforce them.

Hello, I also got scammed from patrica carney selling bulldogs she had sold to someone in nigeria "pastor mark christian", who got transferred to west africa for humanitarian work. We paid for the pups and then they decided that they were going to try to get more money from us saying that they needed more money for a crate to ship them in. We never sent the money but I emailed back patricia who referred them and have traced the emails and have come to the conclusion that they are the same person, all the different email addresses come from the same domain key signature. They are using different names and different emails and different sites Ive found them on "buysell.com" and "nextdaypets.com". Their emails are , , and . I also have phone numbers for them supposed mark christain 807-643-0126 his shipping agent tony ohenhen 806-314-5983 the supposed custom agent gerry ? 806-877-4734, using the international code 011234 before the number, patricia carney has two different numbers and addresses 613-452-7837, and 251-776-6654 this number was with address mobile, al 36695 for bulldogs of timberridge.and also the name messi ? under patricia's name. Please let people know what these scam artists are doing and don't let them ruin anybody elses christmas.

thanks alot for your time,
tasha

I just emailed all the email addresses I had and game them hell, literally. I told them that karma was coming back for them and since they used the christian word they would burn in hell, and I was telling the world. Oh ya and I told them that need to learn to spell, Im so mad, they got me for $800 and wanted another 500, patricia carney just emailed tonite saying she'd pay for 200 if I paid the 300 for a shipping crate. Do I sould stupid when I type or something them scammers need to be charged. what can we do?

sorry, I meant sound stupid...hahah

Tasha, the best we can do is get the word out. When I got the "your email address won the random selection lottery" emails, I kept them expecting a scam and turned them over to the FBI. The FBI can't do anything except warn people on their website (I never saw any warnings on their website when I checked later but I might have missed it) and can only take action if you get scammed. However, according to the Special Agent I spoke with, they rarely get the money back. People whould wonder about such emails, after all, why were you the one selected? The random email address winner bit was "too good to be true" but the dog selling doesn't fall in that catagory, it is just suspicious. However, regardless of how well the word gets out, someone will always fall for it.

Christopher, so true about getting the word out. And, I have to say, this site has helped LOTS of people, as evidenced by the comments posted...including me. I ALMOST got scammed out of $900 myself (for 3 chihuahuas), but I saw this site, thank goodness, and then realized it was a scam! So, THANKS EVERYONE!!!
JoJo

I think no I know I have been scamed! His name is Pastor James Jones. Sounds fimilar. I hope I can get this man back I have contacted Western Union and will be contacting the FBI. They need to really catch these people and throw them under the jail!!!! I was doing this for Christmas, I told him using the name of a Pastor is going to put you in a world of hurting if he is not true.
Deanna

Hi my names Mandi. And my husband was in the Marine Cor. And im dumb and sent this guy in Nigeria 300$ western union. He sent me pictures and everything of this white bulldog. Now he want 100$ for some kinda paper through customes. Well i found this online wish i woulda found it sooner so i knew and wouldnt have sent him ne money. And i requested from Pastor Deangelo a flight number and the air line the puppy was on and he couldnt provide it so i told him i wasnt sending NO MORE MONEY and i wanted my money back! Well i doubt if i ever see my money back. But thanks for this site. Just think id be outta 100$ more if it wasnt for this site.

Thanks