Railway lines scam closed down thanks to FTW reader

The now notorious “SA railway lines for sale” scam has raised its head again – and the news from an FTW reader is that he has had the offending party’s e-mail account shut down. In this case, the export operations manager of a large SA company was targeted in the attempted scam – being sent an e-mail from: “Engr. Jeff Radebe [mailto:j_ radebe12@yahoo.co.nz]” and offering “Sales Of Train Rail Scrap”. The product supposedly up-for-grabs was 360 000-metric tonnes of rail scrap manufactured in Russia and the Ukraine and available in SA at a price of US$125/mt FOB. The section of the e-mail which dealt with payment terms read as follows: “With only POF we will deliver the goods and there will be no up-front payment of any sort until delivery to your port. “The POF will come as pre-advised (MT760) to our bank which seller will present to buyer as his nominated bank account. “If you confirm willing, ready, we will send you the verbiage of POF. “Inspections: By buyer and at the port of loading by SGS for clear and clean of the quantity of the goods loaded on board vessel.” And, after a fulltechnical description of the chemical composition of this scrap metal, the e-mail went on: “Please confirm if you are willing to close down the contract as to enable us schedule and arrange for your urgent trip to South Africa for inspections of the material and signing of the contract with us. “Finally, be informed that upon your acceptance to this offer, we will be providing you with all the related documents for your perusals before coming down to South Africa for the signing of the contract with us.” Enquiries sent to the e-mail address by our FTW reader asking for further identity details of the seller met with no satisfactory response. He remained sceptical of the offer, and after digging further into the technical detail of the e-mail address, he was able to send a complete breakdown of the code to the apparent service provider, Yahoo in New Zealand. His message read: “Hi, Jeff Radebe is the former South African minister of transport but he definitely did not send out this email. I can’t quite figure out how this scam works but although it appears to come from a Yahoo.co.nz address - j_radebe12@ yahoo.co.nz – the reply to mail gets rerouted to agabda147@gmail.com