The Burundanga Business Card Drug Hoax

If you were to receive the following email about a business card laced with a drug called ‘Burundanga’ then you may find it believable but you shouldn’t!

The Burundanga email started circulating in the US almost a year ago but, like most ‘popular’ emails of this type, it has been recently resurrected to try and fool more people.

Here’s the hoax email in question -

In Katy, Tx a man came over and offered his services as a painter to a female putting gas in her car and left his card. She said no, but accepted his card out of kindness and got in the car. The man then got into a car driven by another gentleman. As the lady left the service station and saw the men following her out of the station at the same time. Almost immediately, she started to feel dizzy and could not catch her breath. She tried to open the window and realized that the odor was on her hand; the same hand which accepted the card from the gentleman at the gas station.

She then noticed the men were immediately behind her and she felt she needed to do something at that moment. She drove into the first driveway and began to honk her horn to ask for help. The men drove away but the lady still felt pretty bad for several minutes after she could finally catch her breath. Apparently there was a substance on the card and could have seriously injured her. The drug is called ‘BURUNDANGA’ and it is used by people who wish to incapacitate a victim in order to steal or take advantage of them.

Four times greater than date rape drug and is transferable on simple cards. So take heed and make sure you don’t accept cards at any given time alone or from someone on the streets. This applies to those making house calls and slipping you a card when they offer their services.

Elements of the above email do have some basis in reality which is why an unsuspecting but educated person might believe it.

Burundanga actually is a real drug that is sourced from Colombia and it really is quite nasty.

Also known as Scopolamine, it can lead to hallucinations and there have been cases of people being drugged with Burundanga who are then easily coerced into activities such as making large bank withdrawals before casually handing their money over to their robbers.

(Scopolamine was also used as a truth drug, possibly being utilised in the MK-ULTRA project)

However, the contents of the above email are definitely dubious, and almost certainly false, because no such case has ever been officially recorded.

It is also universally accepted that Burundanga must be taken in quantity, most likely ingested or inhaled, in order to have any meaningful effect.

The chances of a sufficiently powerful dose being administered through the skin after touching a business card are virtually zero.

Lastly, the victim of this hoax email mentioned a strong odor coming from the card but Burundanga is in fact odorless.

Have you received the Burundanga hoax email?

Did you believe it?

Article by Lee Munson

Lee's non-technical background allows him to write about internet security in a clear way that is understandable to both IT professionals and people just like you who need simple answers to your security questions.

Lee has written 2874 awesome articles for us at Security FAQs