From TNPC issue #4.10...

Email Fraud and Common Sense

by T.J. Lee
May 17, 2001

I've spoken a lot about using common sense in regards to email messages that have suspect subject lines and attached files. These are the most common way viruses are passed around the Internet. But, as I recently learned, there are other evil emails lurking out there in cyberland. Fortunately the same common sense approach can protect you from these as well.

The other day I received a message that started like this:

It went on to try to set the hook thusly:

Welcome to the Internet variation of the 40-year old bunco scam called "The Nigerian Letter." The gist of the rip-off is that a huge, and I mean huge, amount of money is setting somewhere offshore in an escrow account and you can earn a percentage by helping the honest owners of this money get it into a bank account in your country. In the case of the letter I received the difficultly the owners of the money ran into was that they were "civil servants and as such, it is not possible for any of us to operate a foreign account."

I have to tell you that receiving this spam message floored me. This is a golden oldie of the bunco world right up there with classics like the "pigeon drop." But it woke me up to the fact that the guys in the black hats who only used to prowl the physical world are waking up and smelling the zeros and ones of the cyberworld. They're jumping on the Internet bandwagon and trolling for suckers using spam email.

The crux of most scams depends on the victim staying focused on getting a huge amount of money. A 5% commission on twenty-seven million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a bit over one million three. This sets up the scenario where investing a few measly thousand to score a cool million seems trivial. And rest assured, something will come up requiring you to cough up some earnest money before you can collect your score.

That this is a rip-off may seem obvious but keep in mind that if this scam and hundreds more like it weren't working they wouldn't be around. So remember that most multi-million-dollar deals don't depend on random emails to strangers. Also, most international businessmen don't work out of Yahoo! or Hotmail email accounts when transacting these mega-deals.

And always keep the classic bit of wisdom in mind: if the deal seems too good to be true, it isn't. Let's be careful out there.

You can reach T.J. Lee at:
mailto:tj_lee@TheNakedPC.com

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