A very convincing email scam

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Matt
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Hey all!

Got this email from one of my friends:

Hello (recipient name),
This message may be coming to you as a surprise but I need your help.Few days back I made an unannounced vacation trip to Madrid, Spain. Everything was going fine until last night when I got mugged on my way back to the hotel.They Stole all my cash,credit cards and cellphone but thank God I still have my life and passport.Another shocking thing is that the hotel manager has been unhelpful to me for reasons I don't know. I'm writing you from a local library..I reported to the police and after writing down some statements that's the last I heard from them.I also contacted the consulate and all I keep hearing is they will get back to me. I need your help ..I need you to help me out with a loan to settle my bills here so I can get back home tomorrow. I'll refund the money as soon as I get back. All I need is 1,640 euros ..Let me know if you can get me the money then I'll tell you how to get it to me.

Thanks.

(Name)
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Turned out his email account has been compromised but this is seriously convincing! Be careful TP'ers.
 
Is it? I guess I'm not a very trusting person :suspect:

Then again they were asking for money and I am Scottish ;)
 
None of my friends take "vacations"...
 
:lol: I guess it depends on the friend. This one could have been real - it is written as you would expect him too.
 
This is like the original scam - I think it's existed longer than the internet. Although back then they probably didn't email.

Besides all else, 1640 euros = £1350, that's a hellish expensive flight back.
 
That's one of the oldest scams in the book. Another variation that was doing the rounds was the journalist/US soldier stranded/kidnapped in Afghanistan (or similar), often it's part of one of those longterm love/penpal schemes devised to part lonely women from their life savings....
 
I know when the friends I would gladly lend money to are on holiday - and since that is a lot of money I would have to really trust someone before I even considered sending it.
 
ive had this one and i think it has scam written all over it, nobody would put that exact detail of information in a first email like that.

they'd be like

hey joe,

bummer i got mugged, bloody stranded here with no acces to cash, at the library, can you help me out mate?
 
oh and even more likely they wouldnt send an email at all, it would be a reverse charge phone call
 
If you beleive that crap, then you deserve to lose your money
 
1) 'Hey all!', 'vacation' - These are words friends of mine would never use.

2) I reported to the police <--- Reported to the police station because they asked you to?
Most people would say 'I reported the incident to the police'.

3)Punctuation and grammar errors.

Anyone who fell for that would deserve to be scammed and personally, I would know straight away it wasn't from a friend on mine.

smoothedit don't get me wrong, it's good of you to make people aware of this but if people still needed to be reminded about email scams, then society is on a downward spiral.
 
:lol: Yep I agree.

The crux of this one is that it is sent from a hacked email account so appears much more genuine.

If it is sent from a genuine persons email address it is all the more believable.
 
smoothedit said:
Hey all!

Got this email from one of my friends:

Hello (recipient name),
This message may be coming to you as a surprise but I need your help.Few days back I made an unannounced vacation trip to Madrid, Spain. Everything was going fine until last night when I got mugged on my way back to the hotel.They Stole all my cash,credit cards and cellphone but thank God I still have my life and passport.Another shocking thing is that the hotel manager has been unhelpful to me for reasons I don't know. I'm writing you from a local library..I reported to the police and after writin g down some statements that's the last I heard from them.I also contacted the consulate and all I keep hearing is they will get back to me. I need your help ..I need you to help me out with a loan to settle my bills here so I can get back home tomorrow. I'll refund the money as soon as I get back. All I need is 1,640 euros ..Let me know if you can get me the money then I'll tell you how to get it to me.

Thanks.

(Name)


Turned out his email account has been compromised but this is seriously convincing! Be careful TP'ers.
Click to expand...



well unless your very friendly with a "yank" then, bin it, E1640 euro for a nights stay in Madrid, our novotel was only 70 euros for 4 of us with a bar bill,

being the last you will here from the civil guarder of police local is nothing new, if someone has a problem with you then they follow it through ie denouncing< other than that, if they can be arsed.

they would have too get up 2 hours before they went to bed to catch me out .


smooth your not selling your kit to help them out are you :D

Merc the unbeliever
 
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chazza said:
If you beleive that crap, then you deserve to lose your money
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Nobody deserves to lose money in a scam. One of the worst going around at the moment is when you are logged on to your online banking and leave it inactive for a while. You come back to it and a message has appeared asking you to re-enter you User ID and password. Because you were already logged on and you left it a while it seems convincing, but someone rather nasty has put it up in the meantime. If you ever get this, close your browser and start again.
 
hashcake said:
if people still needed to be reminded about email scams, then society is on a downward spiral.
Click to expand...

When I worked for a bank we regularly had customers come in clutching printed emails and asking to make international money transfers. One of the favourites was "You have won 10 million euros on the Euro Lottery, please send 2,000 euros to pay the tax so that we may tranfer this money to your bank account." Some people got quite cross with me when I suggested it was just possible they hadn't won and if they sent 2,000 euros that would be the last they'd see of it. Sometimes asking the obvious, "Have you actually bought a lottery ticket?" made them start to see that there might be a flaw in the plan. It's sad to see people in tears as reality dawns.

There was even a case when I refused to make a payment for a customer who wouldn't believe it was a scam and urged her to take the email to the police for confirmation. She went straight to a neighbouring branch and tried to make the payment there! Luckily they told her the same thing. :bang:
 
Yeah. I've been offered a few of these wonderful opportunities by text and mail too. It's difficult to understand why anyone would fall for them. I know people can get a bit carried away by the prospect of easy money, but why don't they just pause, and ask themselves why a complete stranger would offer them 25% of $20m USD just to help them transfer funds out of a dormant account in Sierra Leone (or wherever), or how they could have won a lottery if they didn't even buy a ticket!

The original mail screams scam. Most of us know our friends' writing style and idiosyncrasies, and none of the people I know take a "vacation trip to Madrid, Spain" (this is US English) or write in such a stilted manner.
 
good to be told its out there but as its already been said, its to americanised to work for the UK (unless it goes out to a granny)
 
gazedd said:
good to be told its out there but as its already been said, its to americanised to work for the UK (unless it goes out to a granny)
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The fraudsters only need to find one gullible person in a thousand and bingo!

What can actually be far more serious are the offers of a percentage for moving money into the country through your bank account. These may well be genuine, in which case you will be facing a minimum of 14 years for money laundering!:eek:
 
My mates know that I'd be so busy laughing at them it'd be too late to help them and besides they couldn't afford the interest rate.
 
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