Anyone from WP encounter Bernard Osei?(**Warning enclosed**)

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Frankly this is a mighty strange fellow that PMed me one day looking for a penpal. We wrote back and forth a couple of times, I asked him how he came across WP (Since, for lack of a better term, it's a community&Support group...) and he said he "i get WP from google i seach for sites and i came accross it." yeah.

I myself googled his name and have found about BILLION FRIGGIN RESULTS on all sorts of different community websites. He claims he lives in Africa (Could be true), and is attending an art school.

Anyway, back to my point, I think he's trying to get money out of me. What the hell? I don't have the exact quote but he just recently sent me a reply along the lines of "I don't know what I'm going to do for christmas, my mother is gone, it's just me, my father, and brothers. We don't have any money this christmas, so I don't know how we will celebrate. What are you going to do to help me out with this situation?"

My question is simple: Anyone else encounter him on WP? Annnnnnd should I just stop responding? Or should I retort.... Q.Q I hate life sometimes.

If I searched for my name on google there would be a number of people that would come up with my first and last name as well as myself. In all likelihood, there is more than one "Bernard Osei" on the planet. What I saw was one "Bernard Osei" who claims he is a 16 year old living in Ghana looking for penfriends. I don't see anything wrong with writing him but if it centers on him trying to get money out of you, I would discontinue the relationship.

don't give hm money, its a scam, i've heard of hundreds of them, these people get names and try to scam people into sending them money and then run.. DON"T DO IT!

Sounds like a Nigerian scammer. Ignore.

The polite option: Tell him that you aren't just exactly a "Rockefeller" either, and for that matter not the social benefits office... Maybe even give him a sad story about how much cheating and deception is out there on the net, "and so for safety reasons, I never mix money and the internet...!"

The quick, efficient, no-frills option: Ignore him -- maybe even tell your email program to put anything from his mail address in the "Spam" or "Deleted mail" folder directly.

The wicked option: Go to 419eater.com for some inspiration on how to really play around with scammers...!

Tell him you will transfer some money into his bank account immediately but in order to do so he must first send you his bank account details and a small handling fee (say $100) which your bank insists upon.

You will never hear from him again.

Ignore him. He sounds like a scammer.

You people are amazing <3

Yeah I wasn't seriously considering giving him money or anything. But it really just shocked me that someone would try that with such bad spelling, grammar, and etiquette ^__^

I'm going to do a mix of declining his offer to send him money and 419eating.... I never heard of that website, so it's really just to take a loot at it. Now to find alex.... :O

People never change, that's sure. I used to belong to a snail mail pen pal club, back in the 80's. I had friends in India, Singapore, Italy, Canada, and England. Most of the people were really nice, and we kept in correspondence for a year or more. But there was this one guy, who after several highly flattering letters, sprinkled with questions about the prices of things in the US, started begging to become my "roommate." Of course I ceased communicating with him, as well as turning over his letters to the headquarters of the club. So now it's the internet.