Christian Scam Warning

My name is Patrick Robinson. I am a licensed minister, and I would like to bring to your attention and to the attention of all Americans and Christians worldwide, about a scam that is costing many individuals their life savings and possibly physical harm. You may have heard of the Nigerian scams that started some fifteen to twenty years ago. People would receive a letter in the mail, this letter would promise substantial sums of money if they would help someone in another country to retrieve "legally" their large inheritances that were held up by red tape through some security firm or similar thing. All that is needed from the party receiving the letter is to provide banking information so the funds could be transferred to their account and then you would just have to give them their share of the money afterwards. This scam has cost many their life savings. More people that were taken in by these scam artists didn't report the crime because of being embarrassed by being taken in by them, or they just couldn't face the fact that they were deceived by these tricksters. I even had a brother in-law that almost got pulled into this scam. When I read the letter sent to him, it seemed too good to be true and I advised him against giving any of his banking information to them.

With the advent of the world wide web, these scammers started back up with the ease and free cost of e-mails. They would use different twists to their letters and different types of schemes, but the general idea is to get some unwise individual to give up banking information to them. People would receive very impressing documents with foreign stamps and legal terms. They would even receive large checks, wait a week after depositing them and then send back their overseas partners portion of the funds believing that the original checks had cleared. They would soon find out that it takes some three weeks for these foreign checks to be found not worth the paper they were written on and would have lost all of their savings to boot. Many people even now, are invited to go overseas to retrieve the funds in question. Some have even found themselves being held hostage and not released until certain ransoms are paid.

The newest twist to this scam is the reason that I am writing you this letter. First I will give you a brief history of myself so you can put everything in perspective. I grew up in Georgia, the so called "bible belt". I was saved at 12. I graduated in 1981. I went through the wild teenage years with parties, drugs and the like. I met my wife during high school. We married soon after. God gave me some visions in 1986 that turned my life around and I felt the call to teach God's truth's and the soon return of Jesus to anyone and everyone that God would bring to me. I started working on copiers in 1987 and that became my career. I moved into all types of office equipment, computers, networks, printers, faxes and the like. I had always felt that I needed to do more for the kingdom of God and I would wait on God to open a door for me and I prayed that I didn't miss his "knock". My back started giving me problems soon after high school. I would go to chiropractors on a regular basis. It progressed to a point that it was causing me problems in my work. I was employed at IKON Office Solutions as a technician, and because I had good benefits, and I felt that the medical knowledge in back surgery had advanced to a point that I needed them to fix my bad back. I had my first Lumbar Fusion in April 2001. The doctor fused my lowest vertebra L5, to the tailbone S1. I recovered from that surgery and went back to work. Every thing seemed to be going fine. I had started my own web site in late '99, teaching on various subjects that the "traditional church" tends to avoid. You should check out the site and you will see why. Anyway, in Dec. 2002 my back again took a turn for the worse. I had various tests run and finally in February 2003 was told that the 2 discs above the fusion and the one at the fusion were degenerative and causing the intense pain. The solution was to have surgery again. This time they fused the two discs above and to the old fusion, and they replaced the hardware on the old fusion. I now have a four level fusion, which is not very common, and I still have constant pain. The last fusion was a failed fusion. The disc above this fusion is also degenerating and causing pain along with pain coming from the other discs between the fused vertebra. I am now in pain management. The orthopedics doctor has said that there is nothing else he can do and I just have to continue the pain management. In 25 to 30 years the nerves will "burn out" and my pain will go away, "so they say". There will, however, be some loss of function with the nerves burning out. I have taken all this in stride and have kept the faith knowing that God uses out trials to prepare us for new mountains. I feel that he is using my disability to give me the free time to continue teaching and devote more time to him. I feel that God will open a door for me to do great things and have had a dream of doing something both local and worldwide, more on that later.

This is where the newest twist on the scam artists come in. I receive e-mails from people all the time, that have visited my site and had questions or comments. Most of them are thankful letters for turning on the light of truth. Some have certain counseling needs and questions. I even receive a few hateful letters that degrade my teaching and tell me how non-Christian I am, that I am deceived or full of the devil. I just shrug them off and keep going. Some of the subjects I teach on are not traditional and may appear odd but I am spreading truths that point to God and Jesus as the one and only way to salvation. God isn't afraid of any truth's that we encounter and he would not have us bury our heads in the sand when we walk through the church doors. Now for the Scam. I received an e-mail from a lady. She said that she was a 70 year old widow. Her husband and only son were killed and her husband was very wealthy. She was a new Christian and was dying of breast cancer. She new that she didn't have to worry, being a Christian removes the fear of death from us. However, she didn't want her husbands wealth to go to the government. She sold her husbands lands, houses and shares and had accumulated a sum of 20,000,000 US dollars. She had prayed for God to reveal to her an honest Christian that would use the funds for the Glory of God and advancing the kingdom worldwide. After praying about it she searched the internet, found my site and God told her that I would be the one she could trust to use these funds for God's kingdom. She e-mailed her story to me and requested that I send my name and address so her attorney could arrange these funds transferred to my ministry. I was skeptical, and told her so. I do inherently trust people and wanted to tell her something about myself. I gave her my story and a promise that any funds that she sent to me I would use for God's work. I thought that if her story was true, she would be the door that God was opening for me. I received an e-mail from her "lawyer" the next day. His e-mail sounded official. He said that he was placed in charge of this fund and that her request that it come to me was real. He would be sending me a certificate of deposit in the mail and that he only needed the name of the benefactor or organization so the fund, currently in a security company, could be re-issued to me. He also stated that there would be no charge for this service.

To be honest, I almost couldn't believe it. I felt humbled and scared that God would trust me with such an awesome task. I've had a dream of creating a center locally, that would be a "Safe Haven" for kids and adults to come to free of charge. I would have camp sites, picnicking, walking and running tracks, bicycling, tennis, basketball, horseshoes, swimming, game room, music room, research center "for training ministers or just adult research", a computer center that kids could use for safe gaming and internet access. To top it off I wanted an internet center, through which I could extremely expand my site. I would have research, training, teaching, kids games, bible studies, video and audio broadcasts. I would provide free web space for Christian websites.

More than all this, I want to give away a bible, free to anyone in the world that would call and ask for one. I would give bibles in any language and would ship to every country possible. All this for free. I would only ask for donations to the ministry, and charge a minimal amount for camping supplies, or for paper and ink supplies that people used and could take home. This place would be free for anyone to come to. A get away from the rat-race of the world and a cost effective place for people to come for either entertainment, counseling, or other ministry related needs. I want to provide a service locally for the local citizens to use, yet a worldwide service to get God's word into the hands of anyone in the world that wanted or needed it.

If this lady was for real, I could realize my dream and bring it to fruition. Being a sceptic, however, I searched through the internet and came across some scam letters that were written almost exactly like the one I had received. These scam letters are from the same people that started the Nigerian Scams and the end result is always the same. Honest, trusting people are loosing their life savings and are even being put in physical harm's way. This needs to stop. We need to make people aware so no more are taken in by these criminals. I couldn't believe that they would so blatantly use God's name, ministries, and honest, trusting, people that only want to give back to this world.

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