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Things I Did, Below

I, personally, receive email in HTML format. The following was received (and looked) like I received it. At the time, I was more interested in the message than the headers and do not have the original. This is a copy I forwarded to myself as I sent it to my father.

• I removed my email addresses. These came to various accounts and some no longer exist. There are places on this site you can get hold of me if you wish or need to. They are protected from spambots using JavaScript, but all you have to do is click on them.
• All scammer and related email addresses, and any actual website links have been changed, at least putting spaces into them. They appear as underlined blue links, though they aren't.
• Any notes I added in the actual letter are in square brackets ("[" "]"), are bold, red in color, and highlighted. If what I found "behind the links" (email or website) are different than what was displayed, I will include them in this type of note.
• All spelling, spacing, line-wrapping, and punctuation errors are the ones that appeared in the original received email. (I may or may not analyze some or all of these.)

Scam Example
Received 02/20/2006

This is another scam I received, and being one of the first of it's type (and before this section of OFP was completely developed), I did not save the email headers. Nor did I save the actual email addresses included. (Stupid of me, I know... I will do better!)

I'd been seeing information about this type of scam in the Snopes weekly newsletter for some time. I had just never received one, myself. This is the first. (See the Snopes link, above, for another example.)

NOTE: It's hard to tell it's an "Inheritance" Scam, until the last paragraph.

Notes

Problems I see:

• Obvious (to me, anyway) errors:
  • Why would a professional (a "Payment Coordinator" with a real bank) use a HOTMAIL address?
  • If this were really from a bank in London, why is the English so ... "broken"? I mean, not even an older "Cockney accent" is this far off. (I was in "Three Penny Opera" in college, and it's more of a "clipped" accent than "broken" English!)
  • The grammar is bad enough (The second sentence is a "partial"... But punctuation is REALLY bad without spaces after commas, periods, paragraphs, etc.)
  • As far as I know, I don't know ANYONE in Nigeria. Since that's the case, how could I have a "representative"?
  • "... will reflect in my account ..." NOW we get to it... They're going to be asking for my bank account number and/or online banking password or some such. I'm sure if I respond, I will have to have some money in it before they can transfer the funds, and that money will need to be used for some "problem".
  • BTW: Where's the dollar amount I inherited?
  • You know? I don't think those telephone numbers would work in places like Lafayette, Indiana. I happen to know that one of the exchanges up there is "447". After dialing the next four numbers, everything else would be ignored. There's nothing about dialing an international number anywhere on the message, either (except that I'm supposed to be calling London. Apparently, I'm supposed to KNOW how to dial an international number, huh?
  • If this letter was (supposedly) sent from London, why was the originating sender from Bamako, Mali in Africa? (found by looking at the full email headers (properties), retrieving the originator's IP, and entering it in the "IP Address to Locate" area at GeoBytes - IP Address Locator - Enter an IP address to find its location - Lookup Country Region City etc - a really cool site, if you're interested in this type of thing!)
  • Something you can't see above... This came to an email address I only use with contests and a couple of odd "accounts". Why was it emailed there... OH YEAH... It's a HOTMAIL account!
  • And the "TO" was blank, which usually means a mailing list or more than one email address... Hmmm... If I inherited, why would others have been emailed?
  • Why isn't MY NAME mentioned ANYWHERE in this message?

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