This is how it works. A nice well spoken Nigerian meets his potential victim in a bar, restaurant or public place like a hospital or government office just by chance. The perpetrator begins with light getting to know you conversation. When he feels the moment is right he relates a convincing story about how he became the owner of a briefcase full of $100 US notes. In fact he even tells his victim how much is in the case or box.

The perpetrator is usually African although the gang has been known to train Australian or European operators in a bid to easily gain the confidence of people from those countries.

The con man will show the victim what looks like a brief case full of $100 US bank notes. Each note is covered with a black dye. Several notes on top of the stack are real notes also covered with the "special dye". The owner of the briefcase full of black dyed bank notes will produce a small bottle of a "secret formula" which will remove the dye from the bank note.

It is this dye that becomes the catalyst for enticing the victim to hand over a load of cash money. The con man appeals to the victim's greed and offers to share the contents of the briefcase if he can finance the purchase of more of the special "secret formula".

To prove that the formula really does work and the notes are authentic the perpetrator  will clean two or three notes and even give the victim one of the notes to cash at his bank.

There is nothing special about the liquid that is used to remove the dye from the real bank notes. Usually it is ascorbic acid which can be purchased from a pharmacy. To make the original banknote appear to be dyed they heat iodine in a shallow tray or plate then dip the note in the resulting liquid.

Our friend, who is an Australian, realised too late that he was victim to one of these Nigerian scams. He tried to use the ascorbic acid on the remaining notes that the scammer had left behind in the briefcase shown above but it did not work. He lost 500,000 Thai baht. Other people have lost more. Download this eBook to learn more about scams in Pattaya.