$7,800 In Stolen Computer Memory Recovered From A Nigerian Shipping Scam

PADUCAH, KY – A McCracken County woman has become a victim of a Nigerian shipping scam. The McCracken Sheriff’s office says Terry Carnes of Lebanon Church Road contacted them Friday about a package of 250 one gigabyte memory cards she received from a man named John Mark who she had been talking with on Yahoo Chat for almost a year. Carnes told the man that she had been having financial problems, so he offered her $1,500 to received the packages at her residence and then send them on to him in Nigeria. John Mark told Carnes that he lived in the U.S., but was working overseas. Carnes agreed to the deal and accepted the memory cards from Fed Ex. The man told Carnes to send the packages, but she couldn’t until he sent her the money to send the packages. Carnes received repeated threats on the phone from John Mark, which led her to call the sheriff’s office. Officials called Silicon Mountain, where the memory cards came from and spoke with Account Manager Cy Munoz. He said the memory cards were purchased using an online credit application under the company name Commtech, Inc. in Wichita Kansas by David Nicholas. This application required references from other vendors the purchasing company had previously had business with. Munoz says the references were verified by phone, but after learning of this incident believes the application and possibly the vendors listed as references were false. The package was recovered and Munoz made arrangements with Federal Express to pick it up and return it to Silicon Mountain. Carnes was advised about Nigerian scams and how they use people to get stolen merchandise out of the country this way. She was told to stop all correspondence with the man. Both, the phone number and the yahoo chat account were traced to Nigeria. There is not a means to identify the suspect David Nicholas/John Mark, therefore there are no criminal charges filed in this case at this time.