Tuesday, November 16, 2010

One of the WORST Scam Letters Yet

Got the following in my spam box.

"Why inflict us with it?", you say.

Well I thought it rather humorous and I like funny OK?

As I said, before you so rudely interrupted me, it was in my spam box and the line said from: 'taran sawhney' --- 'Greeting from Mr. Mr.Peters Jim' --- This piqued my interest because I wondered why Mr.Peters Jim needed to use Taran's email to send me his obvious Nigerian 419 scam. I thought perhaps the letter might have some sort of explanation... - - - Nope. - - - Not even a mention of Taran as assistant or secretary.

Digression Follows ~~~
This came from a Yahoo account to a Yahoo Account, had a nifty little icon of an envelope with a bright yellow key. A mouse rollover showed it clickable with the words, "This sender is DomainKeys verified." appearing. - Clicking it opened a new window for me and on the top line Yahoo says, "DomainKeys is one of the tools Yahoo! uses to fight against forged email. It uses encryption technology to verify that an email is really from the domain from which it appears to be. If a message has been verified through DomainKeys, you'll see a small icon of an envelope and key in the email header."

So the little envelope/key that is designed to instill trust in an email was verifying the scammer did not forge the headers. I feel better about that. Forged headers are the first thing I wonder about with 419 scam letters. And that is cool that it really came from a Yahoo account. Yahoo DOES work fast to delete such accounts and it means the scammer will be spending a bit more time setting up a new account instead of fleecing people. So I've forwarded the message with headers to Yahoo and they will know without jumping around that, 'Yes indeed! This is a misuse of our services'...
End Digression ...



Greeting from Mr. Mr.Peters Jim
Monday, November 15, 2010 5:04 AM
From:

This sender is DomainKeys verified

"taran sawhney"

To:
undisclosed-recipients

Greeting from Mr. Mr.Peters Jim

ATTENTION:

Please i want to inform you that your fund was brought to my desk because the director of the WESTERN UNION MONEY trasnfer said that they should divert your fund to the government treasury account just because that you can not pay the trasnfer fee, As result of the information we got i told them to wait untill i hear from you today so that i will know the reason why you rejected such amount of money $1.7m which is your over due inheritance payment just because of transfer fee.

But the reason why i sent you this email now is that you still have the chance to claim your fund if you could send the$38 today because i have already arranged the special courier company which will deliver your fund to you within 2days with your tracking number to see when it is coming to you but failling to do this, they will have power over your fund by monday morning and am very sorry if you failed as this is the last chance .

Please here is the western union information in the name of my messanger to avoid delay in receiving your fund and remember that i have done my best for you and i will make sure that your fund get to your hand next tomorrow.
i went you to call me if you send the money to him so that i will call him , the number to call is this+229-9836-5568 ok do it now

Receivers Name:...JOHN IKELI

Country/... Benin-Republic
City address is Cotonou
Test Question:.. WHAT CITY
Answer :.. COTONOU
Amount: ...$38.00
MTCN NUMBER....

Send it to me for easy collection, the MTCN control number, amount sent, name and address of sender
Thanks
Greeting from Mr. Mr.Peters Jim



SO for $38.00 they will send me 1.7 million? I bet if I wrote to Mr. Peters Jim he would take $25. Times are tough for the Nigerian scammers too.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Update: In less than 20 hours I received this message from Yahoo!
- - -
Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

In this particular case, we have taken appropriate action, as per our
Terms of Service (TOS), against the Yahoo! account in question that was reported for fraudulent activities. ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks Yahoo! Keep up the good work!
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