I received an email at 2:21 am this morning, allegedly from one of my potential employees and in part it read, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was going to Europe . . . I’ve lost my purse (and money) and I need $950 wired to me to clear up the hotel bill so I can come home”.
Obviously, we’ve been hearing about scams like this lately, so I wasn’t surprised to get one of these. I was, however, surprised that the dollar amount ($950) was SO low that it was almost believeable. Obviously, I didn’t send the money, and I notified this person of the email and its’ contents.
The irony of that email, to me, is this: Do you think those that are still perpetuating these scams listen to the news or read the papers? For someone who is currently out of work, and desperately looking for something, to be traveling to Europe without letting everyone know is ridiculous. I may have believed it if the email had, instead, read something like, “please send me $45 for my electric/gas bill” or “please send me $30 for groceries”. That would have been more realistic and may have, unfortunately, generated responses from some of the recipients.
I’m glad the scammers haven’t figured that out yet, and maybe I just gave them the idea. I hope that if someone gets an ’email’ from me that says “I’m in Europe and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you”, they immediately delete it.
If/when I have the wherewithal to go to Europe, believe me, everyone will know about it.
I happen to be much more fond of the ones that describes in great detail a horrible tragedy (plane crash, inoperable cancer, etc.) of someone who has MILLIONS in a bank account in some far off land (Somewhere in South America is popular) who has no next of kin on record.
They insist that these MILLIONS will be forwarded to me as “ACTING next of kin” since they have “no one else” to send the money to and don’t want the big, bad government to seize the money.
As you know… the money suddenly vaporizes on a specific date, usually very immediately, and after years of just sitting there collecting interest.
In order to get my MILLIONS OF US DOLLARS, all I have to do is WIRE $295 (or other odd amount) to them for the “courier fee” and they will release the package. They they even included a photo of a FEDEX package sitting on a desk, claiming it is mine! The same photo is used by several scammers. Of course, you can’t read the label (tracking number, addressee, etc.)
I’ve toyed with these scammers quite a bit. I’ve told them that I would send the money directly to FEDEX. I’ve asked them to delete the cost from my windfall. I’ve asked for the tracking number of the package in the photo. I’ve asked why the return email address isn’t from @fedex.com.
This irritates them horribly… they always insist it must be sent via Western Union and they are forbidden by “law” to extend further information.
One guy was even purporting to be from Bank Of America (my bank), and we went around for about a week with my playing “dumb”. I just liked knowing he thought he had the cash coming when I was really just wasting his time.
I told him I would send the money upon reciept of the signed contract for the transaction. He sent an unsigned attachment with the Bank of America logo at the top, with word for word detail from the first email… not a contract.
I said I would send it from my branch, that I had already done so, etc. I said all kinds of things. And it was FUN!
The replies I got were hilarious…
“NO! YOU MUST SEND IT VIA WESTERN UNION AS INSTRUCTED!!! I TOLD YOU THIS BEFORE AND YOU ARE IN NO POSITION TO ALTER THE PROCEDURE!!!”
“GO BACK TO YOUR BANK, CANCEL THE TRANSACTION AND FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTIONS!”
“IF YOU ARE PLAYING GAMES, WE WILL CEASE CONTACT WITH YOU!!!”
(Always in caps, yelling at me!)
Once I cleaned up the mess in my pants from laughing so hard at the desperation, I wrote saying that I was scamming HIM. I told him that Bank of America and the FBI now had his ISP address because of his many contacts to me and were pursuing prosecution.
Funny… never heard from him again!
I’ve also replied in ways such as “I’m sorry to hear of your (plane crash, cancer, whatever). However, you have NO IDEA how many millions of dollars have already been sent my way from similar situations. I have so much money now, I couldn’t spend it in 20 lifetimes.”
Remember, logos can be copied from any website (FEDEX and Bank of America in these cases have very easy logos to put in an email to make it look official).
Obviously, folks reading this are too smart to fall for these scams, but you might want to string them along for a while if you need a good laugh and have the time!
Linda Mason
PS: Linda, I really AM going to Greece from September 2-9. If I email for cash, it will be legit!!! 🙂