There’s a sense of urgency about Barrister Mathias Hendrick’s e-mail, and for good reason. He’s a London–based attorney who had a very rich client, a Mr. Irvine Wang, who died in a car crash . . . without heirs. Now, Mr. Wang’s attorney wants to give me — me! — a 30-percent share of the $17,500,000 left in Mr. Wang’s estate if — and I’m not sure how this works — I claim to be an heir. I’m Irish-American, not Chinese-American, but what the heck; I must be heir-able.
Barrister Hendrick says Mr. Wang wanted to build a multi-million-dollar steel plant in Florida. That’s where the money was to go, and that’s where the bulk of it still will go. After we take our cuts.
Why does Barrister Hendrick need me? Why has this e-mail been sent? “The company/firm cannot release the deposit unless someone applies for claim through me as the next-of-kin to the deceased. . . . Upon this discovery, I now seek your permission to have you stand Next of kin to the deceased. . . .” There follows a lot of pseudo-legal mumbo jumbo.
We’ve all gotten this kind of e-mail before. I’ve spiked dozens of them on the spot, but this time curiosity got the better of me. What if I pursued this to at least some logical end?
Barrister Hendrick acknowledges there might be “great doubt and distrust in my heart.” Yes, sir, there is. I e-mail to ask if I’m the only one to receive his query. He assures me that I am. I decide to pursue the opportunity, in the guise of an interested, but skeptical, recipient.
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I soon find more reasons to be suspicious. During the course of our five-day e-mail exchange, my correspondent’s name goes from Mathias Hendrick to Mathias Jefferson Taylor and then to Mathias Hendrick Taylor. Once, he is Dr. Taylor. He spells receive “recieve,” which I believe is not one of those British alternate spellings like “labour.” And he seems a little linguistically off for an attorney. His use of tenses and syntax leaves a lot to be desired. Certainly, this man wasn’t raised with the Queen’s English. Consider this: “I write to confirm if you did recieve [sic] my yesterday mail. . . . Please I would like if you urgently reply back to me so as to commence the documentation process.”
Yeah, okay, how is this going to work? The barrister writes: “My plan is to carry this money over to you there in United States through Diplomatic Means so that you will take appropriate care of it.” Then, I am subsequently told, a diplomat will carry a box, of which he won’t know the contents, and will travel here with his wife.
Hendrick (et al) says he’s undertaking these steps to sidestep a “Bank to Bank” transaction and avoid taxes. The barrister, who says he served in the World Court in The Hague, wants my phone and fax numbers.
I e-mail specific questions about how this money exchange would go down. I never get a satisfactory answer. I also write that when he or his representatives get to Boston, we should all meet at a Starbucks. Surprisingly, he’s fine with that.
Eventually, I get a copy of a certificate of deposit that has been placed in the Phoenix Alliance Trust in the sum $7.5 million. Hey, $10 million just disappeared! There goes my house on the beach. Oh well. Also, this money comes from the estate of Irvin Wang, not Irving or Irvine. And the date of deposit is June, 2002. Four years before his “death.”
What's the 419?
I google “Mathias Hendrick scam money.” There he is. More than a few times. In fact, he’s sent a very similar letter, according to the scam-buster law offices of Thomas Gross, to someone promised $7.5 million of inherited money. (The very same amount I’m now dealing with!) He’s listed on another scam-busting Web site that explains this sort of con is called a “419 Scam” and originated in Nigeria (419 being the number of the Nigerian fraud law being broken). The site suggests the scam may be perpetrated by a ring of criminals, with various bad guys posing as officials or diplomats.
I also google phoenixalliancetrust.com and find two sites warning that it’s a fake bank. One site is called Artists Against 419, which referenced me to 419eater.com, a virtual clearinghouse for dealing with situations like this.
At this point, there have been 12 back-and-forth e-mails, most of his marked urgent, with the information getting more and more garbled. Specific questions are met with answers that really aren’t.
I e-mail him about how curious it is that Mr. Wang recently died and, yet, the certificate was deposited in 2002. (I didn’t even mention the reduced sum of money.)
No reply.
The question I still hadn’t gotten answered was how exactly my benefactor plans to get my money. Barrister Taylor has given me a London phone number to call, so I do.