Out of the blue last week, my husband received a handwritten letter from a young girl claiming to be a nursing student at a Nursing college in Kampala, Uganda.
She said that her father had been killed by rebels and she needed $700 sponsorship to be able to continue her nursing studies.
Her letter was accompanied by a typed letter of introduction on the headed note paper of the "institute", complete with an official looking purple stamp.
Unusually, the letter was addressed using both my husband's Christian names but no title. We couldn't work out how she had got his name and address but it seemed fairly plausible.
The next day, however, a very similar pair of letters arrived for me at my work place, again using both my Christian names but no title.
The headed notepaper and official stamp were apparently from different nursing institution but the story was almost identical except this girl's dad had allegedly died of AIDS. This was too much of a coincidence, so I emailed the British High Commission in Kampala to see if these two nursing colleges actually exist. They don't. This is a scam, albeit a rather elaborate one. It looks like they might be using the electoral roll, and it's likely that other readers will have received letters like ours. We were advised to ignore them.
Jenny Hocken
Holy Trinity House,
-Crawley
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article