Titelbild: Beispielbild Pixabay
Another night, another masterpiece from the international email forgery factory. This time the sender is no less than Mansoor Al Maktoum, apparently a senior property and financial affairs officer at one of Dubai’s “prime banks.” He’s writing you personally to let you know that—surprise!—after the 2025 Annual Report and Financial Statements, the bank discovered an “excess” of exactly $17,000,000 sitting quietly in a suspense account with no beneficiary attached. How convenient. How utterly believable.
He explains, in the kind of broken-but-confident English that screams “non-native scammer trying very hard,” that these funds are invisible in normal bank statements (a magical banking practice, apparently), and because he is such an ethical man, he cannot claim them himself or give them to a family member.
No, what this noble banker needs is a foreign partner—someone like you, randomly selected from the global pool of gullible email addresses—to step in as the legitimate beneficiary. The paperwork will be “perfected,” a court will issue a letter of administration in your favor, and then the money will be split between you and this generous stranger who’s never met you. Oh, and the whole thing is completely free, zero risk, fully legal, confidential, and urgent. Please reply quickly.
Let’s be brutally honest: this is not a letter from Dubai. This is a 419 scam dressed in a dishdasha and a fake sheikh name. The structure is textbook advance-fee fraud: dangling an enormous, unclaimed fortune (17 million dollars is the sweet spot—big enough to excite, small enough to seem plausible), inventing a bureaucratic obstacle (suspense account, no beneficiary), introducing a noble but powerless insider who “can’t do it himself,” demanding your trust and personal details first, and promising zero risk while carefully avoiding any verifiable contact information. No real bank name, no official domain, no phone number, no reference number—just a name that sounds rich and Arabic, because nothing screams “trustworthy” like a sheikh offering you free millions via email.
The psychology is as old as the internet itself. They count on three things: hope, greed, and the tiny voice in your head that whispers “what if this is real?” That whisper has already cost people everything. Once you reply—even with a polite “tell me more”—the script flips. First they’ll ask for your full name, address, phone, date of birth, passport scan “for verification.” Then the fees begin: $250 for the “court application form,” $1,200 for “anti-money-laundering clearance,” $3,500 for “international transfer insurance,” $8,000 for “Dubai notary fees,” and so on. Each payment buys you another promise and another delay. By the time you realize it’s all smoke, your bank account is empty and Mansoor has vanished into the digital ether—probably laughing in a Lagos internet café.
This is not a one-off. It’s part of an industrial-scale operation. The same template circulates in thousands of inboxes daily, with only the name, amount, and country changing. Mansoor Al Maktoum today, Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed tomorrow, Dr. Fatima Al Qasimi the day after. They use real-sounding names (Al Maktoum is the ruling family of Dubai—nice touch) to create instant credibility. They reference real things (annual reports, suspense accounts, letters of administration) to make the lie feel solid. And they always stress “confidentiality” and “no risk,” because those words lower your guard just enough to make you reply.
The truth is simple and ugly: no legitimate bank officer in Dubai—or anywhere else—will ever email you about unclaimed millions and ask you to become their secret partner. Real banks do not hide money in suspense accounts waiting for random foreigners. Real courts do not grant letters of administration to strangers based on Gmail correspondence. And real financial affairs officers do not use free email addresses to conduct multimillion-dollar transactions.
Do not reply. Do not send any personal information. Do not send money—not even “just a small amount to start the process.” Delete the email, mark it as phishing, and if you feel like it, forward the full headers to the real authorities (FBI IC3, Dubai Police cybercrime unit, or your local fraud reporting center). Every reply keeps these people in business. Every silence starves them.
The verbal attack of the fake Sheik:
