The Nigerian internet fraud, which has pounded U.S. e-mail accounts touting to make large money transfers in exchange for fees, has taken on a new spin with internet horse trailer sales. The increasing growth of equestrian websites offering free classified ads has provided an effective catalyst for the Nigerian scam artists to test their new scheme. Horse trailers have been targeted because they are high-ticket items. “We discovered it through first-hand experience,” stated Tom Scheve, CEO of EquiInternational Inc./EquiSpirit Trailers. “A California horse owner, who happened to also be an investigator, called our office to warn us. She had found a brand new 2007 EquiSpirit two horse model on freehorseads.com that was offered at more than half off the price. The buyer hoped there was some good reason for the low price, but there wasn’t. When the seller became evasive about showing her the trailer, and wanted a substantial deposit up front, she became suspicious and called us. Since we sell EquiSpirits direct throughout the country instead of through dealers, we can keep close track of our trailers and customers. We quickly discerned that the pictures on the ad were lifted from our website, and that the seller did not exist in our files.” The way it works is this: First, information and pictures of a particular horse trailer are “lifted” from a trailer dealer website. Next, a classified type ad is created and placed on as many free advertising websites as they can find. Once contact is made by an unsuspecting customer, a substantial deposit or even the entire amount is asked for in advance. “I think that most horse owners will be sharp enough to detect that something’s wrong” said Scheve. “The people working this fraud are not horse owners, so email responses to trailer questions are usually odd or evasive, sentence structure and grammar are strange, and in our case, the price was too low to be believable. But I suspect that the 'pitch' will improve if the results show promise, so buyers need to be cautious.” The e-mail was tracked to Lagos, Nigeria, which was routed by Satellite through The Netherlands, and the FBI has been contacted. “So far,” said Scheve, “we have heard nothing back from the FBI."