No end to the internet scams
Surely by now everyone on the planet has heard of the Nigerian 419 fraud, yet the spam mails promising millions of dollars continue to roll in on a daily basis, and the reason they continue is because gullible people keep falling for the scam and rewarding the scammers big time.
John Rempel of Ontario, Canada has recently confessed to being the latest victim of the fraudsters. Back in 2007 he received an email out of the blue from a lawyer representing a client named David Rempel who supposedly was killed in the London terrorist bombings of 2005, leaving an unclaimed estate of around £13 million. Although he was no relation, John Rempel was persuaded that he could inherit this money and foolishly paid £2500 to cover "transfer fees". As always with these scams, the obstacles mounted. He needed to open an account with an internet bank he had never heard of and have a minimum balance of £5000, he needed to pay money to the lawyer to cover expenses, a few thousand to cover UK taxes on the money, several thousand more to bribe a treasury official, and so on. He even flew to London and met some people in the street behind the hotel where he handed over a further £10,000 in cash. Finally, the unemployed 22 year old who lives with his parents realised it was a deception, but not until he had given away close on £100,000, about a third of which was borrowed from his parents, and a third from his uncle in Mexico. It seems one factor which made Rempel think this was genuine was that the lawyer claimed he always went to church on Sundays and always signed his emails with "God bless you".
Even that sum is small compared to 2008's big loser, Janella Spears of Sweet Home, Oregon. News reports say that this intelligent woman, a nursing administrator, CPR teacher and reverand, was contacted by a "long lost relative" in Africa and, over the course of two years, lost a total of $400,000 to the fraudsters. Incredibly, friends, family, even police officers all told her it was a scam but she says that once she had started handing over money she became obsessed with getting paid. When she herself began to doubt the scam, she says she received letters from the President of Nigeria assuring her it was genuine, and one from President Bush telling her that if she didn't claim the money then it could fall into the hands of international terrorists.
Whilst we all might like to think we would recognise one of these scams, we always need to be on our guard. The UK Treasury has this month taken the unusual step of issuing a warning that scam emails are circulating claiming to be from HMRC hoping to hook people frantically trying to fill in their tax returns before the January 31st deadline. The fake emails claim that the recipient is entitled to a tax refund and ask for credit card details so that the refund can be credited to their card. Security firm McAfee says that it has detected 20 different variants on this scam since October 2008, with six variants occurring in the first week of January alone and there are also reports of people receiving phone calls also supposedly from tax officials. HMRC produces the following advisory on the scams it is aware of:
www.hmrc.gov.uk/security/fraud-attempts.htm
19th January 2009
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.