Chapter 13: Lots of Money For Nothing!

In the meantime I received an e-mail from a desperate sounding, good-natured individual in Togo, West Africa. He said he was a bank auditor and he had found an account that had been dormant since 1997. A man named Halem Hosebury had died in a plane crash and left no next of kin. His account had $15,000,000 (15 million dollars) in it! He said no one had claimed it and that he needed a way to get it out of the country. He said he had a girl working on the inside of the bank and that he worked in the bank as well.

He said that if I just signed some paperwork that I could claim the money and it would be wired to my bank account within 7 to 10 days. He said he was a God- fearing man with two kids and a wife and just wanted to get his family over to America. He said I would get a third of the money just for signing the paperwork. I answer all my e-mails so I wrote him back and said “ No thanks. I prefer to make my money honestly.”

He e-mailed back and said this was honest and risk free. I told him it wasn’t. He e-mailed several times more pleading with me to help him out. He then started calling me. I thought this was some kind of sting operation at first, but then it really was an African man and the phone records showed the call came from Togo, West Africa just like he said. He wouldn’t leave me alone! I finally told River and asked him what I should do. We talked about it in private and he said, “ What is it going to hurt to sign some papers? If you don’t do it, I will!” We decided not to tell anyone at all, not even River’s wife because we didn’t want anyone else to get in trouble if it went bad somehow.

So, I signed the papers and faxed them to the number in West Africa that he gave me for the bank that he worked at. A few days later the bank called me to say they had reviewed my request and that I had been approved. I was shocked! He told me to just fly over to Africa and sign the final release and the money would be wired over to my account. I told him I couldn’t fly over there because money was tight and I was busy. What I didn’t tell him was that I didn’t want to end up having some documentary written about me years later after being in an African prison for half my life over some money.

I asked if there was any other way to close the deal. He said I could pay a lawyer to do the paperwork and sign on my behalf. Since I, of course, didn’t know any lawyers in Togo they recommended one for me. The bank representative gave me all the numbers and e-mail contact info for this lawyer that could help me. I asked my original contact if this was a good lawyer and he asked me to just come to Africa and sign the paperwork in person. After I said that was impossible he took a few days to say that the lawyer I asked about was legitimate, so I contacted him.

The lawyer wrote up a formal estimate that said I would pay their firm $30,000 as soon as the money was transferred to my account, but that they would need $7,500 in the meantime to pay for some fees and paperwork to clear the whole thing up.

I asked my contact who said he could get some of the paperwork himself to save us some money so I only had to pay $5,000. River and I talked about it and concluded that there were way too many people involved and way too many phone numbers and so on for it to be a scam just to get five grand out of us. So, since I had just sold my house I had some extra cash that I was going to use to pay off my credit cards. I paid the $5,000 and another $550 to wire it Western Union (rip off!!!!!!).

A few days later the lawyers said everything was approved. They sent me copies of everything they had said they would do and it was done just as I had asked. When I would call any of them a secretary would answer. Then I would have to wait until I could talk to the person I was looking for. I always got responses every time I would fax, e-mail, or call. They were very professional and prompt.
Then the bank president called me and said that I needed to provide him with my “Anti-Drug and Money Laundering Certificate.” I didn’t have one, probably because I wasn’t a drug dealer or a money launderer. I knew that foreign governments were corrupt and they explained that without this certificate that I couldn’t get my money. Then they said it would cost $75,000.

I told them I couldn’t do that. Then I called my contact who was very disappointed. He was hoping those people wouldn’t get involved. After a lot of talking he said someone in the government owed him a favor and would pull some strings for us. He got it down to $20,000 within a few days. I still didn’t have it. He said he would try to raise some funds on his end. He said he had some friends in Ghana and The Ivory Coast that could lend him some money. I even called his cell phone one day while he was driving to Ghana. He sounded very tired and explained that he had worked all day and driven all night to try to make this thing happen for us. He did raise some money, $8,000. I came up with the other $12,000 and wired it over, this time I didn’t use Western Union so it was only $50.

A few more days passed and I got approval of my certificate. They assured me that the money was going to be wired shortly. Then my lawyer called and said that there was a problem because their bank wasn’t associated with my bank so they would have to wire it through Holland, which may cause problems, OR I could just bribe the bank president and he would force it through for $3,500. I told them that I wouldn’t bribe anybody for anything and I would take my chances in Holland. They said the worst case would be that it would take another week to get my money. I wasn’t concerned about another week.

The money was finally transferred to Holland after a huge fuss. I got a call at 3am (there is a 7 hour time difference) saying that the money had arrived in Holland and that I would have to open an account with them so that I could finish the wire transfer. I got his fax the next day and it said that I needed to deposit $25,000 to open an account! I was more than a little upset at this point.

To make a long story short I argued a lot and he finally said I could pay a $15,000 transfer fee instead of the $25,000 to open an account. My partner tried to come up with some money. He told me he had $7,000 and that he wired it. I found another $8,000 and wired that. The next day I got a call that my partner’s money had arrived, but it was only $2,000 so we needed another $5,000 to finish the transaction. He assured me that this was the last of the fees and that after this last $5,000 that I would have the money. By this time I had cleaned myself out, but I had paid off a little of my line of credit so I borrowed another $5,000 and paid the last of it. River was there everyday and we were both hoping for our big payoff. We had already spent the money in our mind a hundred times over.

A few more days passed. Then I got the call that I needed an “Anti- Terrorist Certificate”! It was another $80,000!!!! I was furious! “Just send the money back to Africa and I’ll have them send it over” I said. They said they couldn’t send it back at this point. We argued back and forth for quite some time until I finally asked if I could just come over there and cash out the account so it wouldn’t have to cross international borders. He said that would work so I paid $2,100 for a plane ticket to Amsterdam. I had to get all kinds of special clearance since I bought the ticket the day before I flew over there and I had no formal business in Holland. It was a major hassle. I got searched at every stop point. It sucked!

I flew to London and then straight over to Amsterdam. When I arrived the bank president was there to greet me. He had a car with a driver waiting for us. He bought me a meal (at McDonald’s) and then we drove to an industrial area of town. I told him that this didn’t look like a bank. He said it was a hidden place for large transactions so that the average person didn’t see how much money I had. I had done the math. It would be very heavy and bulky to carry around fifteen million dollars. It would take several large suitcases. It would also be hard for a bank person to keep that a secret, so I asked if there was some kind of security that we could get to escort me. That is why we had ended up at this security place.

It was a little scary. There were codes on all the doors and everyone looked like they had guns under their expensive suits. We talked to someone in charge and they asked for the $4,200 fee to escort me. I had to go back to the airport and cash out some credit cards to pay them. When I got back and gave them the money they asked me for my Anti-Drug and Money Laundering Certificate number and my Anti-Terrorist Certificate number. I got the first one, but the whole reason I flew over there was because I didn’t have the Anti-Terrorist Certificate! I’m not a freaking’ terrorist!

The bank president threw a fit and said we wanted to see the money. They were hesitant, but finally called some guys who showed up with a HUGE case that had chains and electronic locks all over it. They had to put in a bunch of codes and coordinate some things then they unchained this monstrosity and opened it for us. This thing was STACKED FULL OF MONEY! All I could see was LOTS of hundred dollar bills! Benjamin Franklin’s face was everywhere! They pulled out a few bricks of cash. Each brick was $100,000 and it was shrink wrapped. They cut one of the cash bricks open and pulled out a couple of hundred dollar bills for me to test. They were real. I played cool, but inside I was thinking my ship had come in! I had never seen so much cash before and this was all for me... well five million of it anyway!

We had to leave and try to find a way to get this silly certificate. The bank president found me a hotel that I paid for, of course. He said he would be back in the morning. He called the next morning with some lame excuse and said it would be the next morning until he could get there. I waited all day and almost gave up, but he finally showed up about 6 hours late! He said he had been too busy to deal with the security guy, but he would talk to him and work this whole thing out for me. He said that he would make sure everything got worked out and then he sent me to walk to the train so that I could catch my plane back to Texas.

I flew back to Texas and I was a mess. I hadn’t slept right in a LONG time. Between the divorce, the cops, and this I was exhausted. I got off the plane and had a concert ninety minutes later. It was crazy. I told River about the whole thing. Unfortunately, someone had found out I was flying to Holland the day I had left and so everyone wanted to know why I had been gone. I was also in the middle of a construction job at the time. The next day I was on my way to the jobsite when I heard “ thousands of Texas business owners are losing money through the Nigerian Letter Scam. Details tonight at 6...” on the radio. Robert, the guy I was riding with, quickly turned the channel. My heart sank!

That night I did a search on the Internet for the “Nigerian Letter Scam” and thousands of links came up instantly! I started to read and realized I had been taken. I learned that it is the third large industry in West Africa. It originated in Nigeria, but is also in Togo, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and many more. These were all the places my contact had said he was going! The example letters weren’t identical to mine, but they were so similar it was scary. I did the math. Between my phone bills, my plane ticket, hotels, and “fees” I had lost $37,000! I can’t even explain how much despair I felt. I could hardly lift my head up to fake a smile.

The next day I told River what I had found out. He said, and I quote “No. No. No! It must be a mistake! You saw the money, right?” Yes, I had seen the money, but so had thousands of other people. That was a big part of the scam. I actually lost almost nothing compared to a lot of people. Several people got taken for millions of dollars. Several more had been killed. This thing was huge. It was unbelievable. They all played their parts every day as if it was real. They were master illusionists and liars just like their father, the devil. At least I was alive and they hadn’t taken EVERYTHING.

When Robert showed up he asked what was the matter. River shrugged it off, but I was tired of covering it up. I came clean. I told him everything. He said, “So that’s what has been bothering you guys so much recently! That makes a lot more sense. I knew it was something, but I never would have suspected that!” We talked all day while we worked. At some point I realized that I had wired money to a real bank account which meant that I might get it back if I could figure out some passwords and some online banking things. We found a guy that had hacked the Tarrant County Police Department Computer system and was working on some petty plan to take a few cents off a bunch of credit card transactions and get rich. He kind of came to us, we knew him already, but he just volunteered the information. So, we recruited him.

I sat him down and told him the whole story and showed him all the paperwork. So, now four people knew about this and we all vowed not to tell anyone else. He started reading their e-mails and figured out that they were about to transfer ten billion dollars from Nigeria to Hong Kong soon. He said we could intercept the transaction and take some or all of the money. We thought long and hard about it. We knew we could be killed and would have to run for the rest of our lives and change our names if we did this. We knew life would never be the same again after this. We knew we would have to abandon absolutely everything and never look back. We knew we only had one chance to do it and then we would have to disappear and never speak of it again.

We made a plan. I had already looked into off-shore and Swiss bank accounts. I had already talked to people in these banks and made contacts. We figured we could intercept the transaction and then spider web the ten billion dollars into several hundred different accounts around the world. We would each have several aliases and immediately drive and take non-commercial boats to all these places and cash them out and put them in safety deposit boxes under false identities at lots of different banks. There was more, but I don’t want to give away all my secrets. It seemed like a good plan. We looked around the room and said “Are you willing to leave everything and never look back? Do you have it in you to never tell anyone? How will you spend your share of ten billion dollars?”

Three of us had no problem with it at all, especially since we were stealing from thieves. Robert on the other hand didn’t want to leave his life and thought if he just moved an hour away or so that nobody would notice all his money. We told him he would get pegged with this thing and that they would come back and kill him if he did that.

Then we talked about how we would spend all that money... ten thousand million dollars! Robert wanted some houses and cars and stuff. John wanted to have some political movement. River was entertaining as always with his thought process. He wanted to buy an island and establish it as it’s own country. Then he wanted to apply for a seat at the United Nations so he could have diplomatic immunity wherever he went. He wanted to have guns and missiles all over his island so nobody could mess with him. I wrote a mockery of this and put it on the Internet later. It was called Shark Cannon. It was pretty funny actually.

I didn’t know what to do with all that cash. I had been thinking about it for a while. It is a big responsibility to have that much money. To whom much is given, much is required. I didn’t want to own anything because it is a major hassle and you have to maintain it once you own it. In the end the more you own, the more it owns you. I didn’t want that. I am not impressed with flash and glitter. I just wanted to be out of debt and not HAVE to work any more.

I came up with a plan. I would go back and find all the people in my life that had been kind to me when they didn’t think I could repay them. I would spend time with each one and find out their heart’s desires and then make their dreams come true. I thought that would be the most fulfilling life for anyone. What an honor to get to bless the people who truly deserved it. I was pretty excited about it. There is so much injustice and it seems like the guilty flourish while the innocent are persecuted. So, I wanted to do my part to make some of that right.

Time went on and John, our hacker, found out that we weren’t the only people with this plan. Several people had been arrested trying to do this same thing to these same people. Apparently the CIA was watching like crazy. John said, “I’ll still do it if you want, but we will probably go to jail.” I finally did what I should have done when I first got the letter. I just let it go. I forgave them for what they did. I counted my losses. I laid down all rights I had to exact revenge. I made my peace and I moved on. I was so happy to finally lay that burden down. I was a fool to chase such a fleeting promise. I made a mistake, several actually. I am sorry for that. I am ashamed of myself because I should have known better.

I am honestly a fool for telling everyone what I did, but since I opened up I know that my testimony has stopped a lot of other people from doing the exact same thing. So, I am not sorry for that. Hopefully it will help you as well because this is just another perfect example of how the devil lies and promises us the world. He strings us along and coaxes us in little by little until we are in his trap. It really helps me to see more clearly how he works so I am thankful. It was worth the $37,000 and all the sleepless nights and all the pain and stress because all I lost was some money and dignity. I learned my lesson though and that, my friend, is priceless.
Please learn from my mistakes.

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