Tag: scam

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I just spotted an advance fee fraud pitch in the spamtraps that started out with the greeting: Dear Trusting Friend.

I suppose the scammer could have meant “trusted friend,” which is still odd for an introduction, but makes a little more sense. Of course, if you take “trusting” to the extreme—i.e. gullible—you’ve just described the type of mark they’re looking for.

As a bonus: only two* of the ~270 Google hits for the phrase is not a reference to 419-style letters using the same opening. People just don’t write things like that normally, which makes it a pretty good indicator.

*I didn’t look at all 270, but there were only 30 hits by the time Google filtered out duplicates. And most of those were clearly recognizable just from the excerpt on the search results pages. For the record, both of the two non-scam hits used it as a description, not a greeting.

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In the past two weeks, a new variant of the advance fee scam has dropped into our spam traps: supposed UK-based artists needing help selling their works overseas.

The classic Nigerian scam involves someone claiming to be the relative of a deceased or deposed dictator, general, etc. is trying to smuggle money out of the country and needs to borrow your bank account to do it.

It’s usually a third-world country, often one with political strife, so that the average westerner won’t be too suspicious of the level of corruption implied. You never see this scam claiming to come from, say, France, or Japan, because the process would set off too many alarm bells. Someone needing to transfer that much money would either do it through normal banking channels or through organized crime—not by firing off an email to some random citizen in a foreign country.

The first-world variation, at least up until now, has been the “International Lottery” scam. In this variation you get a winning notice, but of course you need to pay them before they can send you the money, etc. This one generally claims to be based in Europe, often several countries in one message. The idea of a lottery seems much more plausible in the first world.

Someone has come up with a way to bring the 419 scam into the first world. The two samples I’ve seen so far both involve UK-based artists trying to sell their works in the US. The premise is that their customers want to pay by some method that is “difficult to cash” in the UK, so they want you, a US resident, to accept the travelers’ checks, or money orders, then wire them the amount minus a 10% commission.

Right.

I’m seriously waiting for someone to offer a commission on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The setting has changed—instead of a dictator’s widow who has hidden away ill-gotten gains in “darkest Africa,” it’s a happy Londoner living with his or her “two kids” and “the love of [their] life” and selling art on the international market. All shiny, happy and yuppie (with just a hint of bohemian). But the script is the same: Someone wants to clear huge amounts of money through your bank account.

I was going to post some quotes, but as I started looking at them, the similarities really go through the entire message. Continue reading →

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eBay must have some sort of blanket advertising deal with Google, because the “sponsored links” you get for some searches really don’t make any sense.

Case in point: I did a Google search for the phrase, “nigerian scam,” and saw the following ad:

Looking for Nigerian Scam? Find exactly what you want today

Wow, when they say, “Whatever it is, you can get it here.”—they really mean it! 😉

Interestingly, if you search for “419 scam,” you get the same type of ad, but not if you search for “advance fee fraud.”

I tried a few random search terms, and from what I can tell, eBay’s ad shows up on many—but not all—two-word searches. I’m not sure what the pattern is, but I can’t imagine someone at eBay deliberately asked to buy ad space for some of these phrases.

But in a show of accuracy, if you search for “random stuff,” you’ll find it!

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I had set this spam sample aside without really looking at it back at the end of March. As I checked the folder this morning, the scammer’s supposed name jumped out at me.

VADER DARTH
CO-OPERATIVE BANK PLC
UNIVERSITY BRANCH, GROVE HOUSE
OXFORD ROAD MANCHESTER UK

I AM WRITING TO LET YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL AND ALSO EXPLAIN THINGS TO YOU THROUGH THIS LETTER AND WILL APPRECIATE IF YOU COULD ADVICE ME ON THIS ISSUE. MY NAME IS VADER DARTH. I WAS BORN IN TENNESSE AND RAISED IN EUROPE AND I NOW WORK WITH THE CO-OPERATIVE BANK IN THE MANCHESTER CITY, UNITED KINGDOM. I HAVE A VERY GOOD FRIEND WHOM I MET IN MY UNIVERSITY YEARS BY NAME FAURE EYADEMA, THE SON OF THE LATE PRESIDENT OF TOGO…

It continues on with the standard Nigerian scam pitch (relocated to Togo) about the relative of the deposed/late leader who needs to transfer a large amount of money through some random person’s account.

Yes, people fall for these scams… but come on, who do they think they’re fooling with an alias like “Vader Darth?”

Perhaps it’s a long-overdue response to the now-infamous 419 Eater successfully baiting a scammer as “D’arth Vader” of Dark Side Industries. More likely someone else didn’t recognize the name when they chose to use it.

I suppose it fits in with the 419 scammer from Tatooine who posted to The Darth Side last month.

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Various outlets have reported on the recent appearance of evangelical spam—unsolicited bulk email which promotes religious messages instead of advertising products. It’s been pointed out that since CAN-SPAM refers to commercial mail it can’t be used to stop people who bombard you with other types of messages.

I’ve seen 419 scams with religious trappings for months. These are the usual “Help me smuggle $20 million out of my country” ploys with the added twist of “Oh, I’m a missionary” or “I’ll donate it to an orphanage” or “You can trust me, I’m a Christian,” usually tied to a middle-eastern nation where Christians are in the minority (because Nigeria is so passé). Of course the only thing the scammers really worship is the almighty X-MILLION US DOLLARS. It’s a cheap sympathy ploy, nothing more, made obvious by the fact that, well, it’s a scam!

Today I saw a new variation on that tactic: instead of appealing to Christians, this one was appealing to Muslims. It was all about some Muslim convert in Cuba who had been abandoned by his Catholic family and just needed to transfer $12 million out of the country… all sent from a UK-based email account.

On a side note, I’ve found myself wondering lately why so many of these seem to come from European ISP Tiscali, particularly Tiscali UK. (One came through yesterday with 119 copies of the standard footer!) I assume they must provide easy-to-get email accounts, or perhaps connectivity for a lot of Internet cafés. It also suggests that quite a few of these scammers aren’t anywhere near the (mostly) third-world nations where they claim to live.