{"id":1105,"date":"2009-10-04T12:20:35","date_gmt":"2009-10-04T12:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1105"},"modified":"2009-10-04T12:20:35","modified_gmt":"2009-10-04T12:20:35","slug":"multiple-choice-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1105","title":{"rendered":"Multiple-choice scam?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve received the most curious scam e-mail the other day. The message body was a brief one-liner: “Open the attachment and I will be glad to hear from you soon.” Not exactly the best way to start a scam, since in this day and age, most people know (you’d hope) not to open attachments coming from strangers.<\/p>\n

I opened the attachment anyway. Well, I’m allowed to. Dare I say, I’m qualified to. I opened it because it was just an ordinary plain text file and I was curious. And yes, I had ways of knowing that it was safe even before I opened it.<\/p>\n

Here is what the attachment contained, in its entirety:<\/p>\n

Dearest \r\n\r\nWith Due Respect and Humanity, I was compelled to write to you under a\r\nhumanitarian ground. My name is MRS. JULIE BRYANT; I was married to late\r\nDr. ADEL BRYANT, a contractor and diamond dealer for Thirty-two years\r\nbefore he died in the year 2005. He died after a brief illness that\r\nlasted only four days. Since after his death, I decided not to marry\r\nagain. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $3.8\r\nMillion in a Bank in Spain and the money is still there. \r\n\r\nRecently, My Doctor told me about my condition due to my cancer problem\r\nand having known my condition. I have decided to handle over this money\r\nto a honest and god fearing Individual, group organization that will\r\nutilize this fund for the services of mankind, helping the motherless\r\nhomes, orphans, widows, as desired by my late husband when he was alive.\r\nI want you to always remember me in your daily prayers because of my\r\nupcoming Cancer Surgery, although I am not afraid of death hence I know\r\nwhere I am going. \r\n\r\nWith God all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply, I\r\nshall give you other information\u2019s on how you can receive this money\r\nfrom the bank. I will be glad to hear from you soon. \r\n\r\nYours faithfully\r\nMRS. JULIE BRYANT\r\nReply me at mrsjuliebryant@btinternet.com\r\n\r\nRosemaira Romero\r\n\r\nTICKET No: 20511465463-7644\r\nREF No: 5687SPL876\r\nBATCH No: SPYU6868\r\n\r\nYou have just been awarded the sum of 950,000,00 Euros Only\u00a0 which was\r\nwon by your E-MAIL Address in our EUROMILLIONES de la Primitiva Lottery\r\nPromotions here in spain madrid. Do get back to this office with your\r\nrequirement via\r\n\r\n(Lottery Trusi Agent)\r\nName: Eduardo Daniel\r\nEmail address: eduardo.daniel@btinternet.com\r\nEmail: mr.eduardodaniel@gmx.com \r\n\r\nNames :............\r\nAddress :................\r\nCountry :................\r\nPhone No :..............\r\nOccupation :..............\r\nAge :.....................\r\nSex :.................\r\n\r\nMrs. Anita Perez ,\r\n(Lottery coordinator\r\n\r\nAngel Sharon\r\n\r\nangelsharon@rediffmail.com\r\n\r\nDearest \r\n\r\nWith Due Respect and Humanity, I was compelled to write to you under a\r\nhumanitarian ground. My name is Mrs Angel Sharon; I was married to late\r\nDr. ADEL BRYANT, a contractor and diamond dealer for Thirty-two years\r\nbefore he died in the year 2005. He died after a brief illness that\r\nlasted only four days. Since after his death, I decided not to marry\r\nagain. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $3.8\r\nMillion in a Bank in Spain and the money is still there. \r\n\r\nRecently, My Doctor told me about my condition due to my cancer problem\r\nand having known my condition. I have decided to handle over this money\r\nto a honest and god fearing Individual, group organization that will\r\nutilize this fund for the services of mankind, helping the motherless\r\nhomes, orphans, widows, as desired by my late husband when he was alive.\r\nI want you to always remember me in your daily prayers because of my\r\nupcoming Cancer Surgery, although I am not afraid of death hence I know\r\nwhere I am going. \r\n\r\nWith God all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply, I\r\nshall give you other information\u2019s on how you can receive this money\r\nfrom the bank. I will be glad to hear from you soon. \r\n\r\nYours faithfully\r\nMrs Angel Sharon\r\nReply me at angel.sharon@btinternet.com<\/pre>\n
Yes, that’s three scams in one e-mail. Or rather, two scams, but one repeated with two different names. The e-mail purportedly came from a “Mrs Angel Sharon” so presumably, the last of the three was the scam that they intended to send. (Note though that in this last variant, they changed the name of the widow but neglected to change the name of the husband to match). So what am I supposed to do now? Reply to all three, in the hope that I get twice the $3.8 million inheritance in addition to the \u20ac950,000 lottery win? Or perhaps I’m better off spending my limited amount of time answering some of the other e-mails I got, like the notification from a Peter Olu telling me that the government of Nigeria is ready to send me my contract payment of $4.5 million, the note from a Dr. Robert F. Johnson letting me know about a consignment briefcase of $2.5 million, the e-mail from Sgt. Tom Kennedy in Iraq who wants to give me $8 million out of $20 million that he’s trying to smuggle out of the country, or the notification from no less a personage than Robert Muller from the FBI, letting me know about the $10 million I am about to receive from Nigeria?<\/p>\n
Do people still fall for these dumb scams? They must, otherwise they’d no longer be in circulation. And sometimes I am inclined to think that those who are greedy or stupid enough to become victims of these scamsters deserve what they get. Now, is there a way to tell scamsters that an e-mail address that has been in circulation for over 15 years does not belong to a likely victim? Guess not…<\/p>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve received the most curious scam e-mail the other day. The message body was a brief one-liner: “Open the attachment and I will be glad to hear from you soon.” Not exactly the best way to start a scam, since in this day and age, most people know (you’d hope) not to open attachments coming […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-6-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1105"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1108,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}