Tag Archives: scam

Kick this one for plagiarism

Posted on June 25, 2012 | 3 Comments

I haven’t received any noteworthy scam mails for a while, just the old standard wheezes. This one turned up in the spam box. I began to wonder if the return addy belonged to a real person who was being used in a shady scam, so I googled.

The Internet never forgets, does it?

BARRISTER’S CHAMBERS:
Andreaw Fraser & Associates
Fax: + 44 203 004 2365
Address: 33 Bedford Row London Wc1r 4jh, England.

On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Engr. Juriaan Kugger. I once again try to notify you as my earlier letters were returned undelivered.

I wish to notify you that the late Engr. Juriaan Kugger made you a beneficiary to his WILL. He left the sum of Thirty Million, One Hundred Thousand Dollars (USD$30,100.000.00) to you in the Codicil and last testament to his WILL.

This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true. Being a widely travelled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were nominated to him by one of his numerous friends abroad who wished you good.

Engr. Juriaan Kugger until his death was a member of the Helicopter Society and the Institute of Electronic & Electrical Engineers. Please if I reach you as I am hopeful, Endeavours to get back to me as soon as possible to enable me conclude my job.

You are advice to contact me with my personal email: fraserandassociates@mail2london.com

Await your prompt response.

Yours in Service,

Barrister Andreaw Farser Esq.
Principal Partners: Barrister Aidan Walsh Esq. Mr. Markus
Wolfgang, Barrister John Marvey Esq. Barrister Jerry Smith Esq.

So out comes my editor’s red pen. Hmmm, can’t spell the name twice the same way.  I’ve actually seen that in published stories, makes me flinch every time. And no, I can’t find a real Andreaw, but I did find that this exact letter, names and all, has been going around since at least 2009. Guess old Engr. Juriaan’s millions are still going begging, heh heh, possibly because no one wants to send  information to a throwaway addy.

Toss this one for plagiarism.

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Unbelievable twist on an old wheeze

Posted on May 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

I brought out my editing pen for this scam–it has a headbanger plot point.

Hello,

I am very sorry for contacting you this way, I got your email address on a guest book people search. I am in contact with other 2 partners in india but this 2 partners location in india city is not good for business investment. I am Afghan central bank governor and name is Abdul Qadeer Fitrat. I am having problem with my bank and i am presently in a hiding place and i don’t want to disclose myself to anyone in my country but i need to secure my future by keeping $60,000,000.00 Million in a safe bank account. I can’t do open business with people but i need a secret partner to help and receive this funds for investment.

i will give you my personal bank officer contact details to contact secretly for the claim of $60,000.000.00 Million. You will receive these funds and use it for investment purpose.

I hope I can trust you? When i am in active duties in my bank i transfer $130,000,000.00 Million to an USA trusted partner but this USA partner ran away with my $130,000,000.00 Million and i lost all funds.

Please help me and God bless you.

Yours faithfully,
Abdul Qadeer Fitrat

I think we’ve seen a thousand of these, but I admit, this is the first one I’ve gotten claiming to be Afghani. By itself it’s not enough to lift this scam out of the ho hum, but what caught my eye was his “terrible experience” in trusting people.

Hmm, trusting random strangers worked so well with the first $130,000,000 million (isn’t that bigger than all the world economies plus the national debt? More points off!) that he’s going to try it again!

TSTL protag. Form rejection.

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A personalized note for the scam

Posted on May 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

My inbox had a new variant of an old scam: send a Pandora’s Box of a file disguised as something else. This time, “DHL” is trying to tell me that my package cannot be delivered, and to claim it, I must open this file to get the form.

I hope everyone who’s ever gotten one of these knows better than to click it: all kinds of evil pops out if you do. According to Sophos Security, this file contains Mal/BredoZp-B and Mal/Zbot-FV, capable of allowing remote hackers to steal your information and take control of your Windows PC. Just what would improve your day, right? Sophos reports a huge increase in this kind of attack in the last few months, coming out of Taiwan, Singapore, and Viet Nam.

My inner editor observed the email, and thought, hmm, no spelling mistakes, has a professional look to it, a comforting looking toll free number, a plausible looking tracking number… I’m not expecting a package from anywhere, certainly not from an international carrier. I’ve seen these before in much cruder form, but for grins, I thought I’d try the tracking number, which I pasted in the tracking window at DHL (which I arrived at without clicking anything this email offered me.

*red pen time* DHL tracking numbers are 10 digits. And good luck finding that 800 number, which Pam the fact-checker wanted to compare. It might be there, and it might even be correct, but I don’t plan to grow old searching for it.

If I was indeed expecting a DHL package, I might have considered clicking, but even so, one should never click blindly, but investigate through the carrier’s website using the tracking number.

So, like an anthology submission that doesn’t quite meet the call, this one gets rejected.  Not a form rejection this time, but a nice personalized note, explaining that execution is polished but the plot is trite.

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This scammer heeds editorial advice.

Posted on May 9, 2012 | 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve had any scam to slay with my red pen besides the usual Nigerian begging letters, so this came as a breath of fresh air. They are trying to address my doubts on the validity of that Irish Sweepstakes ticket I’ve never had, which got the form rejection. At least they heed editorial advice. Plausibility is still going to sink them.

PRIZE DETAILS.

ATTENTION TO THE OWNER OF THIS EMAIL ADDRESS

We are delighted to inform you of our Post Code Lotto prize award held in Rotterdam-Netherlands. This lotto awards is fully based on an
electronic selection, Winners were picked by computerized system, drawn from over 43,000,00 companies and individuals e-mail addresses worldwide. This award is officially announced in Rotterdam-Netherlands, Your email ID has hereby been approved alump sum pay out of ?1,500,000 Euro in cash
credit file Ref: GNP501/731KW, Batch: AM72/PGS27/09FC, Winning No:
DC61/PDN32/01NL

Note: No ticket was sold in this prize award, winners were randomly selected from electronic online world wide. Simply contact Our Foreign Financial Office by email with the following (1)Full name (2)Telephone,
(3) Nationality, for your prize claim immediately.

Dhr.P.W Van Hann
e-mail:advocatenwolgangan@aol.nl

Congratulations! once again.

Yours in service,
Mw. F.A.H. Wielage
(Dpt Sec.)

Well, of course there are benevolent strangers roaming the worlds and combing through lists of email addresses, just yearning to deposit large sums of money in random bank accounts. Just like the Tooth Fairy makes piano keys out of all the teeth she collects, and the Easter Bunny poops chocolates. I didn’t even have to buy a ticket to get chosen!

My inner editor doesn’t believe a word of it, and my inner proofreader thinks that anyone in the Netherlands knows where the Euro sign is on the keyboard. Or maybe the prize really is 1.5 million questions, all sounding like “Why did I fall for this?”

This one gets the form rejection.

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Spammers with subtext, I see you.

Posted on March 15, 2012 | 2 Comments

I was grumping about the lack of literary merit in most of the recent spam emails, and someone sent me a much better submission. Heck, if the publishers only take the top 5% of submissions, as I have heard, then this one would have made it two or three rounds up the acquisitions ladder.

It looked like a proper Paypal email, right down to the logo and an email addy that on first glance was legit. But there’s where it fell apart. Just the way dialog with subtext gives a different notion than do the words alone, the link within the email had an entirely different story to tell. That link would have directed me to some completely unrelated site, possibly a porn or malware site, hard to say. But Ebay will never deliberately direct me to  an official site hosted on charter.com.

I was on to them before I ever clicked, and here’s how you can do it too. Hover your cursor over a suspect link but don’t click! Just holding the cursor above the link causes it to reveal its true destination at the lower left of your screen. This works in Windows Live email, it works on net based Gmail, heck, it even works on web pages. But if you have any reason to doubt a link will take you where it says it’s going to take you, hover. If the link promises a hop to YourBank but the lower left reveals http://hornysluts.com/index, you know where the truth lies.

After all, in dialog with subtext, it’s the subtext that’s the real message.

Here’s a link to practice on: hop over to Dreamspinner to read the blurb for The Rare Event.

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