Beware - Email scam

Dear friends,

I hope you all are well!
One of the members of our Rafiki Club alerted us to the fact that someone allegedly from the Philippines contacted her via the Rafiki site [here on PulseWire] and asked to be contacted directly, and privately to an email address (hotmail). When our member did so, this person then asked her for help, using one of the many “scam” stories around these days, i.e. “I’m the widow of so and so... inherited this much money... need help to so and, so etc, etc:

You can check this link http://www.419baiter.com/_scam_emails/09-01d/scam-email-042166.shtml to find out about this particular message, and in this same site (http://www.419baiter.com/) you can find out about other scams. Actually you only need to do a quick search on Google, and will find more sites with information on email scams.

Of course it is very worrying, that this person managed to contact one of the members through the Rafiki page, neither Lin or I are sure how this happened, and we regret that this member’s email has been abused by somebody posing to be a Rafiki member.

Therefore I wanted to ask you to be very careful if you receive messages that you find suspect in any way, especially involving requests to help related with money, money transfers, etc.

As Lin said, they have made all efforts to secure the website of Project Africa, and only herself and two other people have access to email addresses of Rafiki members.
No Rafiki members in Kenya have email addresses of the Rafiki abroad, unless International Rafikis included this in their mails, which we (have) advise(d) against to avoid such scams.

We also note that the women in the Rafiki Program in Kenya have no email access unless they get help from people who know how to send emails.

Please do not put your addresses in the letters you send to your Rafikis, it’s enough to put it on the outside envelope, so the coordinator has your updated address, and if you receive a direct request from your Rafiki, asking for money or any help through letters sent through post, please alert the office right away. Please do not send any money or any details of you to any one except to the Project Africa office, if needed.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me or Lin.

I wish you all a wonderful day!

Liz