Should I Help This Client Through My Award Booking Service?

by Gary Leff

Many readers know that I help people book award tickets. It’s a great business, and I’m able to make it possible for folks to use their points in a way they never imagined — often it’s honeymoons, major anniversaries, sometimes it’s trips abroad to adopt a child. Every trip is special in its own way.

My partner and I have redeemed upwards of a billion miles at the ‘low’ or ‘saver’ level for premium cabin international awards.

As you can imagine, I get lots of requests Here’s one I’d love your feedback on. Should I help?

My name is Mr.boby and i will like to book Ticket I would like to make some Flight reservation for my client can you booked for my client Now?

Lagos Nigeria …….To……. Turkish Istanbul

Name……AKINTEYE SUNDAY OLAWALE 8/06/13 return date 11/06/13

Name……KAREEM YUSUFU TUNDE 8/06/13 return date 11/06/13

Name……OJO MUSILIU ADEBAYO. 8/06/13 return date 11/06/13

Name……ADEKUNLE OLALEKAN AYO 8/06/13 return date 11/06/13

Kindly get back to me there quotation my mode of pay will be credit card.

i will be waiting to read your email soonest,

Thank you
boby.

It doesn’t sound like they have any miles, though, so I’ll probably just have to send them to a travel agent.

Or maybe the trip’s originating in Lagos is a giveaway. What do you think?

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About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  4. I don’t know, Good Sir. But I have recently come into possession of 35,000,000 million miles of Airline points deposited by the late honorable Deputy secretary of foreign affairs for my country into an account that requires special acess. With your kind assistance, we could equitably divide these miles with you receving 65%. As this is a matter of some delicacy, I look forward to hearing your response by confidential email.

  6. Maybe they need to wire you $10M to hold in your account and you can keep 10% for your services

  9. We travel agents get these emails all the time. Amazing how everyone needs a flight either to or from Lagos, Nigeria…

  10. If you Google “AKINTEYE SUNDAY OLAWALE you will see a link to another travel agency, this one in the Philipines, which Mr. Boby contacted through Facebook a while ago. He was trying to make the same reservations for his cohorts for a trip in June. Also, Mr. Boby (his full name is Yusuf Boby) has a FB account in which he is pictured and listed as being employed by the Community Secondary School old Works Yard Mushin.

    Seems like in this age of the internet it’s impossible to remain anonymous.

  13. It appears they are using the DD/MM/YY date format — in which case their planned departure is (or is soon to be) in the past.

  15. Scam or not I found it tacky to publicly disclose the names of the passengers. They emailed you personally, why broadcast it? That’s lacking class and exposing their travel plans. Dislike. Consider deleting this post imo.

  19. You potentially shouldn’t help them because it is unclear that they have the mileage necessary, but you shouldn’t not help them because of the number of vowels in their name or because of their point of origination–unless of course you believe that it is right to treat an entire nation as criminals/fraudsters because of the acts of a few. Certainly hope you aren’t booking people originating from NYC. Never know which Madoff-like characters you are dealing with.

  21. Tell them you would be glad to do it. In fact, you have 50,000,000 frequent flyer miles you want to give to them for free flights, but first you will need them to wire you $10,000 USD — which you will promise to refund — in order to make the initial reservation.

  22. I would skip this opportunity, but at the very least not send any of my account details. If you decide to pursue, ask him to wire the money by Western Union. 🙂

  24. Check with the PRISM folks. Whoops – it just occurred to me that you are now officially connected with these suspicious sounding guys and might get a call from NSA. And yikes- I might now be connected with them too (via you and this post to your blog) so big brother might be looking at us more closely.

  30. Turn them into the department of homeland security or Interpol, etc. as suspicious.

  31. Let’s just hope you don’t have any kind of privacy policy on your site.

    And I’ll certainly think twice about emailing you my travel requests on the off chance you’ll just put them up.

  32. Good job revealing your client’s names. Who knows if people will trust you any longer with their requests.

  38. All the people decrying privacy breach by Gary have no experience in the travel industry. This is 100% chance a scam. Anyone engaging in a scam has no right to privacy. Furthermore, the fact that the names are Google’able means that these are placeholder names–I’m guessing they’d swap them for real names (their clients) whenever they hook a live one.

  40. I’m more concerned with some of the commenters!

    Emails like this are legendary, but I wonder how genuine travellers based in Nigeria get on, I bet they have to constantly explain that they are real.

  41. Sounds like a 419 scam to me… But good for a laugh (I’m sure you got a few yourself too!).

  42. so i’m compelled to reply because i am nigerian with an uber nigerian name. and i’m muslim. i’ve also contacted you in the past regarding reward tickets–and posted on flyertalk in regards to the same. while you gave me some sound advice, i cannot say the same for the members of flyertalk, who’s responses were similar the previous comments you’ve received. is it fair? hell no. i’ve been a member of flyertalk since 2004 and felt i deserved at least the benefit of the doubt before one poster said “i hope you don’t get kidnapped” or something close to it.

    what are you risking by responding to these guys?
    probably less than them (since you’ve posted their names for all to see on the internet) thank goodness i didn’t contacted you for your service and been subjected to the same!

    so i guess my question is why is this really so suspicious?

  43. ma’am: It follows the precise pattern of an email that we get at our travel agency about ten times per month. We used to follow up on them to ensure that it wasn’t simply some legitimate person whose English was poor. Not one of them has been legitimate. I haven’t formalized a list of attributes that tell us that these things are scams, but trust me, when you’ve seen as many as I have, you can spot them instantly. Here’s one we got four days ago:

    DEAR SIR/MADAM,
    IT IS MY PLEASURE IF YOU COULD USE YOUR YOUR GOOD OFFICE AND BOOK THE BELLOW FLIGHT ITINERARY TO ARGENTINA FOR THE ONE PASSENGERS NAME LISTED BELLOW ALONG WITH THE ITINERARY.

    FIRST NAME: [redacted]
    LAST NAME: [redacted] MR. {DATE OF BIRTH: 03/23/1978}
    USA PASSPORT # 73309****

    ROUTE:
    ORD {CHICAGO} == EZE {BUENOS AIRES} 10 JUN 2013
    EZE {BUENOS AIRES} == ORD {CHICAGO} 26 JUN 2013
    ECONOMY CLASS.

    KINDLY SEND TO US THE FARE INCLUDING ALL TAXES.
    THANKS.

    TEL: 347 *******

  44. All I know is that, as a result of you leaking your prospective customers purported names and itinerary on your blog site (regardless of whether or not they are real), I myself would never, ever, consider doing business with you.

  45. Everything was cool except for the fact you used their real name. That is very distasteful and this will be on the internet for decades to come. Everything in Africa, or West Africa, or Nigeria is NOT fraud.

  46. “so i guess my question is why is this really so suspicious?”

    If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it must be a duck

    I love this semi “you was being racist” jab, just because “Im Nigerian too”… Right.. My cousin Boris from Moscow says HI..

  47. FF, just email them and say you book them with your own miles in good faith. And let them know that “demurage being processed by honorable Esq. Hung Don Lo, who will require small public remittance fee to release shipment” 🙂

  48. Why don’t you set up a Google Wallet conga line with them and rack up a few miles?

  49. Folks, this post was a joke since the email was a scam. I am not ACTUALLY asking, these are NOT real prospective client names. How many people didn’t get that? 🙂

  50. I didn’t get the joke. We all get Nigerian scam-type emails and this sounds like it probably is one, but I subscribe to your blog for real information, not this.

  51. @Gary I am always wary about Nigerian e-mail scams with the words credit card, western union, money wire. A few times they have sent me a check that looked real and wanted me to cash it and then wire some of the money to Western Union, but to keep 80% of the amount as a finder’s fee.

  52. lol @ people being upset with Gary for posting fake names. These people aren’t real!

  57. ROFLMAO…How dumb are people replying here? Its a 419 scam! Yeah everyone should be worried thatGary is going to publish your name on the internet if you ask him to help with a real booking! Seriously???

  58. All of the people that think the request was potentially real should be on alert as they are susceptible to falling for this type of scam.

  59. That’s hilarious!! And yeah I’m surprised too how many ppl on here would think for a moment it’s real.

  62. @bored russian–no semi ‘you being racist’ jab here. i clearly stated i asked gary for help with a lagos booking in the past AND HE GAVE ME HELPFUL INFO. what are YOU trying to say?

    what i’m actually saying is that there are legitimate business proposals that come from nigerians everyday–and that this request originating in lagos should not have been enough for him to assume its a scam. so everyone in lagos who wants to book miles are con artists? i have to explain myself because i’m nigerian? or was it me throwing in that muslim bit that really got you going?

  63. Are you trying to tell me the folks selling “Rolax” watches on the streets in NYC are actually peddling fakes? Or you are just saying that because most of them are black?

    @ ma’am It’s clearly not a matter of racism, nor Nigeriophobia, since when you contacted Gary with a legitimate request he was quite helpful. But this type of obvious fraud, that people in the travel industry get quite frequently, based on the comments above, does not deserve any respect. And as David G said, anyone who gives it the benefit of the doubt is so naive they are just waiting to be taken.

    By the way, did you just drop this very valuable ring? No? Well, I don’t have time to sell it to a jeweler, so I’ll let you have it for a vary low price. 😀

  65. “obviously a scam, but you should still remove the names”

    Because obvious scammers, using made up names, deserve anonymity? Names have been withheld to protect the fictitious guilty. ROTFL

  66. Robert: I am very interested in the ring. Let’s discuss it at an authentic tea ceremony in Beijing. My good friend has a special rate for Ney Yowkrers!

  67. Der, how dare you not assume that eloquently written email is not a legitimate client? You should hello him, and if he sends you a check for more than the total you should write him the balance, because clearly this is legit. Now all your clients will leave you, because they’ll’ve worried that if they send you poorly written non mile related scams you might publish them, clearly you have a responsibly to redact all the names and protect the criminals.
    In seriousness, i used to audit financial institutions, including their suspicious activity reports. If you knew how many reports I’ve read involving little old ladies dipping into their 401k to help their friend in Nigeria until a quick acting teller talks some sense into them, nobody here would come to their defense. Those people are scum… Assuming that since we have money in the US it’s a victimless crime, when they only ever seem too reel in poor and indigent. There are nice legitimate people in Nigeria, I’ve met several great students in grad school… they write well and don’t email random strangers. Anyone claiming he is racist because he won’t sell this man tickets is an idiot… A fool and their money are soon parted

Comments are closed.