For those of you
not aware of it, it’s a nasty and dangerous world out there. And with the proliferation of technology, the
people who are prepared to take advantage of you are becoming ever more pernicious
and proficient.
With that as my
introduction, I’ve reproduced below an email I received today. Except for the alleged sender’s name and
email address, nothing has been altered.
Hello Al Jacobs,
I noticed and
believed you are a trusted person, so i decided to share business opportunity
with you. My name is xxxxxxxxxxxxx, i am a banker by profession. I have a good
business deal that can change our entire lives without involving any problem, i
only requesting for your good cooperation with me as a foreigner.
There is an
abandoned fund in my branch which belongs to one of the deceased customers who
happens to came from oversea, the amount in question is $18.5 million and it
has been in the deceased account for over 4 years without any claim. I was his
personal account officer and has every information to reclaim this fund through
your help, because your surname is exactly the name showed in his account next
of kin file.
You only have to
provide your account where my bank will transfer the fund to you as the located
next of kin. I will be in position to handle everything here on your behalf and
providing every necessary information that bank might requested for approval
and release of this fund to you, and as soon as the transfer is successfully done
to your account then i will immediately come over to your country for the
sharing and good investment.
Please i want
you to be rest assure that this business is completely risk free and the fund
will be legally transferred into your account without any delay. If you are
interested to cooperate with me then kindly respond back to me immediately
through this email address (xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx).
I will be
waiting to read from you.
Best Regards,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I hope you all
recognize this as the scam it is. The
only thing the sender really wants from you is your bank account number. You may be certain that once they receive
that, any transfer of funds will not be to
your account—it will be from your
account. This is a standard theft
technique, with the only variation being the story they concoct as a
justification.
You should notice
that the pitch for your cooperation is phrased in a way that invites you to
collude with the sender to defraud a third party—in this case, whoever is the
rightful owner of the abandoned account.
Apparently the factor of greed acts for many persons as a strong
inducement to engage in such a scheme. I
suppose there’s a certain perverse glamour arising from circumstances where you
fancy yourself in a thick as thieves
association.
A final word of
caution: Be aware that the illicit solicitations you will receive in the future
will not only come from a semi-illiterate source, as is this one. They will become more sophisticated and plausible. Expect to see what appear to be demands from
firms with which you do business, threats from governmental agencies such as
the Internal Revenue Service, and pleas for help from close friends and
relatives. Some of these will be
frighteningly convincing, so that it will take a strong nerve on your part to
avoid prompt, though unwise, action. All
I can do is urge that, before you do anything in each case, you conduct as
thorough an investigation as you can, and as quickly as possible, so to corroborate
the validity of whatever story you receive.
And with that, I
can only add: Good luck!
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