Paul Temple and the Dr. Kumar Case (9)

Mid June our involvement with the scamming Dr. Kumar came to an abrupt end (click here for the complete series, to be read in reverse). We had our fun with him, and we were pretty sure there would be no more emails from Kumar being sent inquiring after another two weeks in September. However, a few days later we received another email, again from a doctor. This time it came from a certain Dr. Nelson Mark, a "medicine man" from Aberdeen. The email read:

"Dear Sir/Madam Compliments of the Season,

I am delighted to inquire for accommodation in your facility,I want to book accommodation for a Vacation.

Arrival date: 1st SEPT 2012

Departure date: 10th SEPT 2012

Total number of rooms needed 2 double rooms

Total number of nights 10

Total number of guests 4 (All ADULTS) Two couples.

We need: 2 double rooms or 2 bedrooms apartment for 10 nights.

Kindly provide us with the following details:

1. Your rates per night include all taxes in Euro or GBP

2. Its subtotal for the 10 nights in Euro or GBP

3. Our abroad sponsor will issue a certified cheque to you for our total payment.please let me know if you accept cheque payment.

We are group of medical experts from England coming for vacations.

Date is not available please get back to me with another date.

Have a nice day.

My Regards,

Dr.Nelson Mark

Orwell House, Souterhead Rd.Altens,

Aberdeen,AB12 3LF,United Kingdom.

Tel:+447448066447."

Not only were the dates Dr. Mark wanted to spend here with three of his colleagues identical to those our Dr. Kumar had in mind, also the party size and the number of rooms were identical. Based on the similarity in use of written English I could only assume that both Doctors had attended the same primary school. The education in basic arithmetic must have been of the same quality as the English language course; I seem to remember from my primary school years that arriving on September 1st and leaving on September 10th results in a stay of 9 in stead of 10 nights...

Anyway, we had had our fun smoking out Dr. Kumar, and decided to bin Dr. Mark, or at least his email.

Until.... after two weeks e new mail arrived, again from Dr. Mark, identical to the previous one, and with the same loud title in capitals "BOOKING NEEDED".

Doing nothing at all for a while had bored us by then, reason why we decided to try to go for Dr. Mark's throat.

We sent him our normal standard email, telling him that he had to pay approx. € 200 up front, and yes, that we accepted cheques. Remarkably enough, we heard nothing from Dr. Mark; even more remarkable was that the steady stream of these sort of scam mails (we received sometimes 3 a day!) suddenly completely dried up.

Based on this I have developed a theory, called the "van Halderen conspiracy theory no. 12".

Mr. X, the brain, or at least one of the brains of the organisation, hands out big amounts of email addresses to a number of his accomplices. They are supposed to send those out, using any name or profession they fancy. The medical profession is obviously quite popular with this gang.

The moment a victim is hooked, Mr. X takes over. He does the actual negotiations, and he is the one with an overview of what has been going on. He possibly has built up a list of "unsafe" addresses, and we are, no doubt, on that list. I assume that our email address has been removed from the database all together.

For those who are fed up with receiving these sort of emails, I would strongly advise to follow the "van Halderen approach". I cannot, however, guarantee the same results as the ones we've got....



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Paul Temple and the Dr. Kumar Case (10, epilogue)

Although this series originally was meant to contain 8 episodes, in the end it turned out to have two more.
Click here for the complete series, to be read in reverse.
In the previous episode I wrote that we never heard from Dr. Nelson again. That is certainly true, but still the scam had not yet come to an end.
Some days after the last mail from Dr. Nelson we received another one, from a certain Engineer Wilson, coincidentally (?) having the same address as Nelson. We asked him for € 2460 and received a cheque for £ 7000.

This is how it all started

This was also a stolen cheque, like the others we received, and also in this case we managed to contact the owner. Neither the police nor the bank was interested.
After a while Wilson phoned us, asking why we had not forwarded the money to his logistics agent. We told him that we had never received any details, and promptly they arrived.
We waited a few days, and in the meantime we searched the internet for Mr. Frederick A., the logistics agent. Mr. A had a Facebook account, and we also found him in the telephone directory. The guy we found happened to be a Nigerian student. Coincidence? We cannot prove it, but to us it seems that this "agent" most likely was using his own name and his own bank account!
After some more days we told Wilson that there had been a problem with the cheque; our bank would not give us any details, could he please send a new one?

The first stolen cheque (from Dr. Kumar)

Again we thought this was the end of the story, and again we were wrong. We received another cheque, from the same stolen chequebook, this time for £ 6500.
After a while we told him that his second cheque also had bounced; that both cheques were stolen, and that we would cancel his reservation. We would only consider a booking if he forwarded the money required to book, without any extras for his agent. Wilson could not get enough. He wrote the following mail:

"Hello, Good day. Sorry I have not been able to get back to you as we have been busy discussing with our sponsor. It is obvious as the cheque payment method could be accepted as you stated in your mail. Please we are very interested in your hotel and we are asking if you have credit card or equity line so that the money will be deposited into your account. Thanks as we await your early response. Best regard, Robert."

Would this be sufficient for a birthday party? (Mr. Churchhill)

By this time we started to get a bit fed up with good old Robert, and we answered him thus:

"Dear Mr Wilson Thank you for your continued interest in our accommodation. I would like to briefly recall where we are. Firstly, your sponsor sent me not one, but two stolen cheques, so I find it difficult to believe that the credit card currently on offer, is not stolen as well. Secondly, I am not sure if you are aware, but your logistics agent in Enfield, London (Mr A.) is known as a Nigerian scammer and is currently under investigation by the Metropolitan Police fraud squad. If you want to maintain any form of credibility, you need to find new business partners. In summary, your cancelled reservation remains just that - cancelled. Yours, Sue"

The first cheque from Engineer Wilson

And finally it stopped. While I am writing this, it has been almost three months since the last email. Since then we neither received scam emails asking for accommodation, nor for organising birthday parties. Even emails asking for help with smuggling big sums of money out of obscure countries has ceased.

Summarising: the first mail that triggered off this scam chase came in on 7 May 2012.
We "received" a total of £ 44740 (approx. € 55750). I did not take into account Wilson's last cheque.
Total sum required for birthday and gîte bookings: € 37470
Total loss for us : € 18280, had we been so stupid to fall for all 3 scams.

the second cheque from Wilson : all is well that ends well?

We sent the last mail out on 8 September 2012. We strongly believe now, after all we know, that this scam is NOT run by a number of independent small-scale scammers, who haphazardly get hold of emails addresses and stolen cheques. The whole thing smells of quite a big organisation, centrally managed using a number of scammers, and structurally capable of stealing chequebooks and possibly even credit cards. It is also evident that neither the banks nor the police are the slightest bit interested in stopping these people.
As far as I am concerned, I am quite pleased that this whole thing ground to a halt. Having said that, it is a pity that my collection of stolen cheques stops at a paltry four pieces....

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A double première

Yesterday finally was the day: we would watch the live performance of Verdi’s La Traviata in the Metropolitan Opera House sitting in a tiny cinema in Chalon. De show ran at the big auditorium, with a balcony, hence we looked straight into the stage of the Met.
This was the very first time I saw La Traviata in a modern “timeless” setting. And that was not disappointing. I am not terribly impressed by two singing Negros with ghetto blasters on their shoulders prancing through a Mozart opera. I would also not be impressed by Porgy and Bess being performed by an all white crew, hence I think there is nothing wrong showing La Traviata in mid 19th century costumes and scenery. But actually I have to admit that the semi-circular stage with a continous bench along the edge, with as the only requisites a huge clock and a number of Ikea-sofas, grew on me during the performance. As a matter of fact, I thought it was very effective indeed in the last act. The music was fantastic, the sound in the cinema was superb and the high definition projection was crystal-clear. In the mean time I have found out that this “Live at the Met” service is available in other countries as well. In the UK one can watch “Live at the Met” even in Llandudno!

Next years program did not really appeal to me, but those who loved the film “The Lord of the Ring” will certainly drool watching Wagner’s complete “Ring der Nibelungen” with plenty of Teutonic violence, gigantic scenery and big quantities of warriors with swords and spears. The preview we saw was very similar to the preview of I once saw of “The Lord of the Ring”.
And the second première? When we wanted to turn into the path to our house, we caught a young wild boar crossing the road in our headlights. And then you realize that you do not have your camera with you...

A confession

I have a confession to make: I really do like opera. Actually, I should rephrase this: I really do like ONE opera.
And that one opera turns out to be Verdi’s “La Traviata”. How come just this one opera? Well, that is quite a story on its own.

It all started in the early seventies with a set of three LP’s, which I received from a Russian woman in a sort of present-exchange program. The Beatles album “Let it be” was shipped off to the Soviet Union, and in return I received “La Traviata” in Russian, packed in a typical Melodia luxury edition. I was soon taken in by the wonderful music, but although I studied a bit of Russian in those days, I still needed an excerpt of the story from an opera book to understand what the story was about.
Anyway, I loved the music, whether the singers were performing in Russian or not.
A couple of years later I saw “La Traviata” on TV, in Italian and with subtitles, and since that day I was completely hooked on that particular opera. In the meantime I had also read Dumas fils’ “La Dame aux Camélias”.

A bit later, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, several quite good ex-Eastern block opera troupes started touring the west, and that is how I saw my first “live” performance of “La Traviata” by a Polish troupe.
Just loving one opera sounds a bit meagre for any real opera buff, hence I tried to widen my perspective a bit. But what to choose? “La Bohème” I knew from TV, as I did “Madame Butterfly”. “Die Zauberflöte”, “Così Fan Tutte”, Le Nozze di Figaro” and “Carmen” were very accessible, but I would classify those as light operas. Wagner was discarded as politically incorrect, but maybe Tchaikovsky was a good alternative. Not only did I like him as a composer, I also did like Pushkin’s work. So I did try to watch “The Queen of Spades” and “Eugen Onegin”, but no matter how I liked the stories, the operas as such were too heavy for my taste.

Since then I restrict myself to the lighter Mozart operas, Bizet’s Carmen, and of course the opera with which it al started.
It is anybody’s guess of which opera I have a copy on DVD, and not just for show; it is indeed viewed regularly...

Now how did this story pop up in my litttle brain? The film “The Artist” was showing in a village centre nearby, but we could not make it there because we had other obligations that evening. After searching on the internet for some time, I found that “The Artist” was running in cinema Axel in Chalon-sur-Saône. We jumped in the car one late afternoon, parked on the edge of town and walked towards the cinema. The film turned out to be worth each one of the 30 km we had to drive to see it. After the show I was browsing through some brochures, and I found one which stated that regularly live performances of operas running at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York were shown in this cinema.

My curiosity was aroused, and the very last opera announced in the brochure was ... “La Traviata”, showing 14 April live from New York, hopefully with American subtitles...

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Some like it hot

Ever since we moved here we have been on the look out for stuff one cannot for the world buy in this part of France. And I am not talking about trivial stuff like Brown Sauce or Marmite, no, I am referring to stuff that is vital for one’s survival, like chilli peppers.
To our big surprise, just before our second Christmas in France, we found a lady at the entrance of Intermarché trying to flog off something she announced as “petits poivrons” (small peppers, or small paprikas). These tiny little colourful things, in the Netherlands known as Madame Jeanettes or more correctly as adjumas, and I think in the UK as Scotch bonnets, are innocent looking things which however are more than capable of blowing someone’s brains out. We were well surprised to find them in Burgundy, where a tiny bit of the mildest curry powder is considered to be deadly for the tongue and the taste buds. Later that year we encountered them occasionally in Grand Frais.

Since we had just been to the Netherlands bringing back a kilo of the stuff to be frozen, there was no need to buy any; a decision I regretted ever since.
After this once we have never seen anything remotely resembling something hot in the shops. We have searched everywhere for ordinary chilli peppers, in Carrefour, Intermarché, Atac, Grand Frais, the market and the like. The “hottest” readily available peppers are “piments forts”, which are mildly spicier than green peppers (piments doux), and since then we brought tons of lomboks or chilli peppers over from the Netherlands. However, we kept on searching in France, to no avail, until today.
When we entered the Intermarché at lunch time, I saw to my big surprise a box full of red chilli peppers, labelled as “Piments rouges”. However, having been fooled by the piments forts before, we decided to buy one pepper, just to see whether this was a proper chilli or one of the fake paprikas so popular here.
To the amazement of the lady at the till I took the pepper from its plastic bag after having paid for it, and took a good bite. It tasted spicy, but not really hot. However, I suspected that this was the real stuff, and not some surrogate article. To make sure, I took another bite, this time containing a good number of seeds...

And lo and behold, the moment I had chewed a few seeds, a warm sensation spread through my mouth, which spontaneously started to produce saliva in great quantities.
Which proves that there are actually simple ways to figure out whether something is really hot, or not, without asking the shop keeper...

Don Quijote

France is “thinking” about durable (this word is now simplified to green) energy, and although in high circles nuclear energy is also considered to be durable, the idea that wind energy might be a good alternative for fossil fuel and possibly nuclear energy wins slowly some ground.
Obviously, there are high circles and low circles. Whenever in France the high circles propose something, a considerable part of the low circles starts to protest.
The Burgundy region as well as the Saône-et-Loire department are “thinking” about wind farms, which are quite common in the Netherlands, but also in other parts of France and Europe. One condition for exploiting wind farms effectively is the presence of wind, one would think. And wind is exactly what Burgundy is lacking. Apart from the occasional autumn tempest there is hardly any wind, something that struck me as a very weird thing coming from a windy country like the Netherlands.

Anyway, feasibility studies were announced, and some sites were chosen, where possibly a wind park might be erected.
One of the “chosen” spots is a hill near the village of Saint-Ythaire. The moment this became known, half the population was up in arms, forming committees to fight the proposed wind turbines or éoliennes, as they are called here. The other half stayed put, in fear of upsetting the neighbours.
As said earlier, wind farms in the Netherlands are not uncommon, also not at the edge of towns or villages. There is hardly any opposition against them as far as I know; the occasional ornithologist is opposing them from a bird’s eye point of view, some people worry about the stroboscopic effect which might cause epileptic attacks, but horizon pollution and the influence of the whizzing of the wings hardly raises anybody’s concern.
The inhabitants of Saint-Ythaire however think differently. They have since decorated their village with signs warning against 5 turbines of 125 m each (too high, horizon pollution),

signs stating the “fact” that éoliennes are an ecological deception, signs saying that the efficiency will be insignificant (the only good argument I have heard so far) and statements that say that each of the proposed 5 éoliennes will require 1500 tons of concrete for its foundation (another argument that makes me think “what does this have to do with the price of beans?”).
Anyway, travelling through the Netherlands for a week, enjoying the continuous wind blowing there and feasting my eyes on the horizon pollution caused by wind turbines, I found a very nice alternative in Zoetermeer, the town I lived in for a long time. Smack in the middle of town there is an old, alternative wind mill, still working and in use for the fabrication of flour. I would not mind having one of them in my back garden...

Sans Virus!

Some time ago, when we went to the Intermarché in Cluny for our shopping, we found part of the parking area closed off for works. Recently the works were completed, and it appeared that they had built two covered parking places, both with an intercom facility. We had no idea what these parking places were for; our best guess was a facility to return a rented van (the Intermarché rents out vans) outside opening hours of the supermarket.
Today a big sign revealed that we had been completely wrong. The parking places were part of a new service Intermarché is offering: “Le DRIVEINtermarché”. The client orders his shopping via internet, and indicates when he comes to pick up his shopping. He passes by at the agreed hour, parks his car at the intercom and announces his arrival. Somebody from Intermarché then comes to the parking area and delivers the shopping.
When I read this and thought about it for a second, I realised that this concept had disaster written all over it. Inhabitants from the villages around here ordering their shopping through internet?

First of all they would miss out on an endless conversation at the till whilst unloading their shopping trolley, followed by digging in a bottomless handbag looking for the chequebook, after which a pen has to be found as well. Then the cheque has to be signed and handed over, after which the said piece of paper disappears in and reappears a number of times from a magic black box which happens to verify the cheque. This whole procedure which so far has lasted at least 10 minutes is concluded by the stowing away of the shopping followed by an in-depth conversation about the neighbour’s cat. No Burgundian would miss out on something like this, would he?
Secondly, and that does not go just for the locals here but for big parts of France, computer illiteracy and fear of computer viruses are rather high in France compared to the UK or the Netherlands.
To illustrate this: a number of our French friends, amongst whom also business people, only open emails if they come from someone they know. All notorious carriers of computer viruses, such as films, jokes, web links, etc. are opened without any hesitation as long as they know the sender. However, one potter who works around here received a request for some home made pottery from my daughter, who had been there once and had bought some stuff there and then. The request was binned without being opened, for the simple reason that she did not know the name of the sender!
Another illustration: in our favourite quiz show every so often one of the prizes is a PC. This is always announced as “ordinateur avec écran plat, SANS VIRUS!”. One even finds these adverts on the internet.

I really wonder if it is at all possible to buy a brand new computer from a French retailer which contains a virus.
Anyway, to cut a long story short: I do not give this service a long life; I am pretty sure that soon the two parking spaces are going to be used for the rental vans…

My profile

I was born and brought up in Delft, The Netherlands. Marriage and work brought me from place to place in the Netherlands: Maassluis, Zoetermeer, Amsterdam, Rotterdam. In 1982 I moved for work temporarily to Singapore for 6 months. Those 6 months turned out to be 3 years in the end. I still consider Singapore one of the best places I have lived and worked. I really enjoyed working there, and I still have many Singaporean friends. After having worked many years for design offices specialised in the petrochemical industry as a civil engineer, I decided it was time for a change. And the change had to be something dramatic, not just swapping civil for e.g. structural engineering! A number of things helped tremendously; bankruptcy of the company I had worked for for over 30 years, being employed by a compatitor which, at least that was what it seemed, was heading the same way, and last but not least a partner who was also fed up with her employer. And that was the start of a couple of years holidaying in France trying to find the place we would like to settle down in, a few weeks of intensive house hunting, and finally the move from the Netherlands to France.