Joe has already demonstrated the fearlessness necessary to be a war correspondent. "Being a Christian, I'm pretty well protected by God I believe," he said.
A Leamington man has fallen prey to international scam artists who strung him along for more than a year with the promise of millions in cash, but ultimately bilked him and his family of $150,000.
John Rempel said he quit his truck driving job, lost friends, borrowed money and crossed the globe in pursuit of a non-existent inheritance, after he was contacted by e-mail in what is known as a Nigerian 419 scam.
Rempel said he borrowed $55,000 from an uncle in Mexico and his parents gave him $60,000 on credit to cover fees for transferring $12.8 million into his name.
“They’re in it now because of me,” said Rempel, 22, breaking into sobs. “If it wasn’t for me, nobody would be in this mess. You think things will work out, but it doesn’t. It’s a very bad feeling. I had lots of friends.
“I never get calls anymore from my friends. You know, a bad reputation.”
His troubles began in July 2007. He said he got an e-mail from someone claiming to be a lawyer with a client named David Rempel who died in a 2005 bomb attack in London, England, and left behind $12.8 million.
“They used to come in the mail,” said Leamington police Const. Kevin O’Neil. “Now the majority of these are sent through e-mail. Keeping up with the times, using all the wonderful technology that’s available to them.”
“I was told once that they send out 30,000 e-mails a day, around the world, and they hope for just one or two responses. Once you return a phone call or return an e-mail, these people now have their hooks into you.”
The lawyer said his client had no family but wanted to leave the money to a Rempel. It was his lucky day.
“It sounded all good so I called him,” said Rempel. “He sounded very happy and said God bless you.”
The man then told him he had to pay $2,500 to transfer the money into his name. Then there were several more documents. Some cost $5,000.
He was told to open an account at a bank in London. That required a $5,000 minimum deposit. The crooks later sent him an e-mail with a link to what he was told were details of his new account. Some money had been transferred there for “safe keeping.”
“Everything was good,” said Rempel.
Then he got an e-mail from a government department — he’s not sure which country — saying he owed $250,000 on tax on his inheritance. Rempel spoke to his contact, who told him they negotiated the fee down to $25,000.
Rempel went to Mexico where his uncle owns a farm. His uncle gave him $10,000 cash and money for a plane ticket. He was going to London to make sure it was legitimate.
“I had $10,000 in cash in my pocket and my uncle sent another $25,000 when I was over there.”
In London, Rempel met some people and handed over the $10,000.
They met Rempel the next day with a suitcase. They said it had $10.6 million in shrink-wrapped U.S. bills. Rempel wanted more proof. His new friends pulled out one bill and “cleansed” it with a liquid “formula,” which washed off some kind of stamp. Rempel was told that process made the money “legal tender.”
“I was like holy crap, is that mine?” he said. “They said ‘yes sir, it’s yours.’ It all sounded legit.”
Rempel returned to his hotel room clutching the formula and waited for the others so they could cleanse all his money. They never showed, and later told him they got held up. In the meantime, Rempel dropped the formula. The bottle broke. He called his contact who said he’d get more. Rempel returned to Leamington and waited.
A few weeks later Rempel got a call. They found more formula. It would cost $120,000.
“I thought, ‘let’s work on it, nothing is impossible,’” said Rempel.
His contacts were willing to meet associates in different countries to get cash for the formula. It would require several plane tickets, worth $6,000 each.
Rempel was told they collected $100,000, but still needed $20,000. There was a guy in Nigeria who had it, but another plane ticket was required. The contact later told him he could only get $15,000 and “begged” Rempel for the last $5,000.
Rempel borrowed money. He stopped making Visa and car payments.
They called a week later and said the money was ready to go. They just needed $6,900 for travel costs and to rent trunks to ship the money.
Later, the men called to say they were at the airport in New York. Security stopped them and they needed $12,500 for a bribe. Finally, Rempel had enough.
“I said, ‘no way I’m cleaned out.’”
Rempel, his parents and 10-year-old brother Ike drove to New York. They spent a day searching the airport for the men, with no luck. They returned home and called police.
“I really thought in my heart this was true,” said Rempel.
How could he call it quits after he already invested so much? He was just one bribe away from getting all that money. This guy just doesn't know how to stick to a plan. Now nobody gets anything.
Edit: Oh yeah, I posted this in the money money thread a while back. Seemed relevant here too.
FROM MR H.M.PAULSON
WASHINGTON, AMERICA
Dear kind & beloved Sir,
I am Treasury Minister of Republic of America and I need sincere help of most honest and wise man. You are recomend to me by mutual freind as exemplery person. My nation has gone bankruped and will soon cease to be. With great good fortune and help of wise men I have extract sum of 700 billion dollars which I will use to buy all property of failed nation at auction and use to start new Republic.
In meantime I need access to bank account to store this mony where theives and crooked politicians will not look to find til auction start.
Please help so much and I pay you commission of seventy million dollar ($7o,ooo,ooo) for you kind assistance. Forward me you bank account name and number and PIN number to access same. As soon as I get, I deposit $7o,ooo,ooo,ooo. Later I retreive $69,93o,ooo,ooo and leave you with rich reward for urgent help.
I dunno. I mean, I feel sorry for the guy, but seriously. Has no one in has family ever used the internet? Everyone knows not to fall scam to something like someone with a similar last name dying and leaving money.
Now if a lawyer of the deposed king of Nigeria needs to transfer money to you based on a mutual friend's recommendation, then that is perfectly fine. Once I've finished helping the lawyer transfer the king's funds out of the way of militant hands, I'll be set for life.
It's nothing like that at all. You can be loving towards the world and happy without being conned for hundreds of thousands of dollars; most people are. It's completely possible to be kindhearted and loving and at the same time having enough brains to figure out when something is obviously not legit.
Besides, he didn't get conned because he was a loving man, he got conned because he wanted to get rich fast. It's not like the people who contacted him said the money was for some orphanage or other sort of foundation to help people out.
I saw 4chan prepping for this a few days ago. I'm conflicted. On one hand, I feel bad because he's just a kid who thinks he's trying to do good in the world, but on the other hand I think it's a little pretentious to think the world can be made a better place by trying to convince people to not make certain vocal sounds that you do not like.
McKay Hatch was on a mission. Bothered, he says, by the foul language he heard around school, he formed what he called the No Cussing Club (http://www.nocussing.com), and soon had thousands of followers from around the world.
But then, on the Sunday after New Year's, his father checked the group's e-mail after church and found 7,500 unread messages -- some of them threatening, almost all of them filled with obscenities.
McKay, a 15-year-old high school student from South Pasadena, Calif., has found himself the victim of a massive online attack, with people sending offensive e-mails and trying to crash the group's Web site. Strangers ordered pizzas sent anonymously to the family home in the middle of the night. The Hatches found their mail box clogged with porn magazines.
All, says McKay, because he was trying to make the world a better place.
"A lot of kids at my school, and some of my friends, would cuss and use dirty language all the time," he says. "They did it so much, they didn't even realize they were doing it. It bothered me so much that one day I challenged them to stop."
The No Cussing Club grew from a school project to a national phenomenon. McKay appeared on dozens of news programs, was cited by Dr. Phil, and went to other schools to give inspirational talks.
But then came messages such as this:
"i am going to find you And mutilate you with a scalple" [sic]
Or this:
"Every time I see your stupid [expletive] braces on those stupid [expletive] teeth of yours on that stupid [expletive] face of yours I just want to kill you with my bear fists." [sic]
Another message said, "Now, please, pack up your [expletive], and leave. You all are nothing more than [expletive], and should be treated nothing more than such."
McKay says he can imagine he touched a raw nerve.
"A lot of people were saying I was taking away their freedom of speech," he told ABC News by phone when he came home from school for lunch. "All I was trying to do was raise awareness."
McKay's father, Brent Hatch, says his son has been brave -- but in one day he received 35,000 pieces of spam.
"On the outside, he seems to be doing fine," Mr. Hatch told ABC News, "but last night he came home from soccer practice, and for the first time he started crying. We went out to grab a bite, just to get him out of the house."
McKay said, "At first it was kind of scary, but then I realized they're just bullies, and they wanted me to be scared."
McKay's parents have encouraged him in his quest. They themselves published a book a few years ago, "Raising a G-Rated Family in an X-Rated World." But they say they never expected their son to have to endure more than a few taunts.
"I always give him the option to stop," Brent Hatch said, "but he says, 'No, this is my mission.'"
The Hatches say they called the local police for help, and then the FBI, after death threats turned up on the home answering machine. (The FBI says, as a matter of policy, that it does not confirm or deny whether it is working on a case.) A Los Angeles law firm has offered help too, threatening to sue the Internet service providers whose systems have been used to attack McKay's effort.
Amid all the abusive messages, there have been encouraging ones as well.
"I just want to tell you that I think you are an amazing kid!!" wrote a woman from Canada. "It's a great thing you are doing here. And I am also going to try to cut out my cussing also. Thank you for that!!"
Another person wrote, "You are our future and it is up to you to determine the course of our nation with good morals, values and standards. Thank you for standing up for what you believe in. Keep up the good work!"
Brent Hatch says he's grateful how friends and schoolmates have come to his son's support.
"Good is coming out of it, trust me," he said, "though it's sometimes hard to believe it when something like this happens."
I really don't feel bad for this kid at all. He brought on himself. I remember checking out their website the first time you posted about the club. They're not just trying to raise awareness, they're encouraging people to stick their noses in other people's business and tell them how to live their lives. They encourage people to ostracize and humiliate people who use swear words.
Wait 4chan did this? I guess I need to look at their website again because last time I didn't see the "Lets send hate mail to a 14 year old because he is trying to change something that he sees is wrong" thread.
Really? I went there a week ago. Half of the threads were about how much they love some emo girl on youtube, and the other half were about how much they hate her and that mentioning her should get you banned.
If my friends could say no to cussing, how much easier will it be for them to say no to drugs, violence, and pornography.
That’s a good thought, however terribly impractical.
Cussing≠ Drugs/Violence/Porn
And personally, I don't care if people swear. They're just words, they can't hurt you. I can't see the incredible difference in the world if no one swore. People would still be jerks and kill; they'd just do it with good language.
Wait 4chan did this? I guess I need to look at their website again because last time I didn't see the "Lets send hate mail to a 14 year old because he is trying to change something that he sees is wrong" thread.
Clearly you don't frequent 4chan often. But that's probably for the better.
I think I have a different definition of cussing than some people, to me its not just saying a set list of words such as Fuck, shit, bitch ect. To me cussing is the use and intent of language to offend, degrade or humiliate someone. So to me saying "That’s a fucking awesome piece of shit" is perfectly ok but "You fucking piece of shit" is different. I approve of calling a female dog a "Bitch" because that is the meaning of the word but calling a woman a "bitch" in an offensive or degrading manner is not. So to me to stop cussing doesn’t mean deleting words x, y, and z from my vocabulary, to me it means to stop using any words of any languages to attack someone’s feelings or to try to degrade them.
Edit: Though this doesn’t mean I completely agree with his cause. But, I do applaud this young man for doing what he thinks is right and hope that he doesn’t back down just because some people on the internet sent him a bunch of hate mail.
If everyone backed down because some, a lot, or most people disagree with them we would probably still be living on a flat planet in the middle of the solar system. And I wouldn’t have learned a^2+b^2=c^2 in the 7th grade ^_^
I don't think trigonometry ever got anyone excommunicated from the church, but I understand what you're saying. This kid is looking to stop people from using words x,y, and z. He doesn't care what meaning they actually have or what meaning you intend them to have.
I don't think trigonometry ever got anyone excommunicated from the church, but I understand what you're saying.
Yes, I think it was back before that, ummmm. I’m not sure maybe someone has better history knowledge than me and can explain it better. It was a group of people who though of that and other things like square roots and imagery numbers (I think?) and they where tortured and stuff for it. Sorry, I'll have to look in that story to tell it better.
I'll also have to look more in depth on his site, maybe I'll even email him asking his definition and see if he can clarify it, or maybe even discuss changing it, if there is a better way to look at things. Hopefully he still checks his email, it would be too bad if 4chan made it so people can't contact him and discuss differing ideas about his morals/objective of his organization.
(CNN) -- A bird struck an Arkansas hospital's helicopter Saturday, tearing a hole into the aircraft's nose and prompting the pilot to land early, according to officials and pictures taken after the landing.
The chopper's pilot made a "safe landing" in that state after hitting a bird while returning to Baptist Health Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, hospital spokesman Mark Lowman said.
"I think the pilot just made a judgment call to set it down," Lowman said of the landing, which happened at 6:15 p.m. Saturday near Forrest City, Arkansas.
Video footage taken by CNN affiliate WREG showed a bird hanging out of a hole torn into the paneling on the chopper's nose. Part of the helicopter's windshield also was broken.
The pilot was slightly injured during the landing, and the other two crew members on board were uninjured, Lowman said.
Federal aviation officials are investigating, and the helicopter is not expected to be grounded for long, he said.
The helicopter was returning from a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where the crew had taken a patient.
The incident came two days after a US Airways jetliner was forced to land in New York's Hudson River, apparently after striking a flock of birds.
Shortly after the jet took off from New York's LaGuardia airport on Thursday, the crew reported seeing a flock of birds. Seconds later, the cockpit voice recorder captured the sounds of loud "thumps" and both of the plane's engines failed.
The pilot, C.B. "Sully" Sullenberger, landed the Airbus A320 in the Hudson, where all 155 people aboard were rescued.
Comments
Joe Six-Pack
Joe the Plumber
Joe Biden (Sarah Palin's favorite)
You might want to keep that to yourself, Joe.
After Sarah Palin wins the white house in 2012
Leamington man loses $150,000 in Nigerian scam
Edit: Oh yeah, I posted this in the money money thread a while back. Seemed relevant here too.
FROM MR H.M.PAULSON
WASHINGTON, AMERICA
Dear kind & beloved Sir,
I am Treasury Minister of Republic of America and I need sincere help of most honest and wise man. You are recomend to me by mutual freind as exemplery person. My nation has gone bankruped and will soon cease to be. With great good fortune and help of wise men I have extract sum of 700 billion dollars which I will use to buy all property of failed nation at auction and use to start new Republic.
In meantime I need access to bank account to store this mony where theives and crooked politicians will not look to find til auction start.
Please help so much and I pay you commission of seventy million dollar ($7o,ooo,ooo) for you kind assistance. Forward me you bank account name and number and PIN number to access same. As soon as I get, I deposit $7o,ooo,ooo,ooo. Later I retreive $69,93o,ooo,ooo and leave you with rich reward for urgent help.
Please send today as matter is most urgent.
Your new partner and new friend,
Mr H.M.Paulson
I think that right there's the problem. Try thinking with a more appropriate organ next time, who knows, maybe your brain!
Now if a lawyer of the deposed king of Nigeria needs to transfer money to you based on a mutual friend's recommendation, then that is perfectly fine. Once I've finished helping the lawyer transfer the king's funds out of the way of militant hands, I'll be set for life.
Besides, he didn't get conned because he was a loving man, he got conned because he wanted to get rich fast. It's not like the people who contacted him said the money was for some orphanage or other sort of foundation to help people out.
'No-Cussing' Club Attracts Followers -- and Thousands of Hate Messages
Have they ever heard of Anti-Aliasing?
Cussing≠ Drugs/Violence/Porn
And personally, I don't care if people swear. They're just words, they can't hurt you. I can't see the incredible difference in the world if no one swore. People would still be jerks and kill; they'd just do it with good language.
Clearly you don't frequent 4chan often. But that's probably for the better.
Edit: Though this doesn’t mean I completely agree with his cause. But, I do applaud this young man for doing what he thinks is right and hope that he doesn’t back down just because some people on the internet sent him a bunch of hate mail.
If everyone backed down because some, a lot, or most people disagree with them we would probably still be living on a flat planet in the middle of the solar system. And I wouldn’t have learned a^2+b^2=c^2 in the 7th grade ^_^
Yes, I think it was back before that, ummmm. I’m not sure maybe someone has better history knowledge than me and can explain it better. It was a group of people who though of that and other things like square roots and imagery numbers (I think?) and they where tortured and stuff for it. Sorry, I'll have to look in that story to tell it better.
I'll also have to look more in depth on his site, maybe I'll even email him asking his definition and see if he can clarify it, or maybe even discuss changing it, if there is a better way to look at things. Hopefully he still checks his email, it would be too bad if 4chan made it so people can't contact him and discuss differing ideas about his morals/objective of his organization.
Another aircraft grounded after hitting bird