Scam emails - does anyone have fun with the senders?

[Mendota]

We all receive these from time to time. Lately, I have been receiving more of them. It's almost as if the scammers took a little hiatus over the holidays to recharge their batteries and spend some quality time with family, and now they are back at work again. LOL

Here's the latest one I received. It stood out to me because the grammar is so poor. It's funny that if they are going to make the effort to try to appear formal and official, that they wouldn't try to find a buddy or someone else who at least speaks and writes better English. I can't imagine a single person ever falling for something like this.

I love how in his second paragraph he instructs the reader to "cease any further communication with any of the previous shady elements that may have been communicating with you in the past." He even made up an email address for himself but in the header the address he used for sending the message is info@getvax1stop.com. It would be funny to somehow create a way for the scammers to get blasted with thousands of responses saying yes, they would love to use their help. I can imagine the scammers getting excited by the prospects, only to have their excitement turn to frustration and then sadness as they try to engage with and track down all of the thousands of fake bot responses!

I have read some hilarious blogs and websites where people with much more time on their hands will actually engage with these guys and string them along for days or even weeks on end, intentionally making errors and behaving so comically that the scammers get really frustrated. Some of them even get the scammers to take photos of themselves in crazy situations or holding signs that read funny quotes. Since they usually have poor English language skills, they often have no idea what the signs they are holding even mean.

Anyway, without further ado, here's the latest:
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Dear Beneficiary,

Compliments of the day,

I am Dr.Raphael W Bostic,President Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. I handle financial consultancy for government, financial institutions, companies and high net individuals. I was informed of some funds belonging to beneficiaries being held up in suspense accounts with the Federal Reserve Bank. These funds are as a result of inheritance/Donations/lottery contract sum owned to beneficiaries all over the world but have not been able to be released to them due to bottlenecks caused by the remitting officers from the foreign country where the transactions originated from. I have been consulted by the Federal Reserve Bank Board of Trustees in conjunction with the United States Government to resolve with immediate effect all payments to beneficiaries whose fund are with Federal Reserve Bank.

You are to cease any further communication with any of the previous shady elements that may have been communicating with you in the past attempting to frustrate you from claiming your funds. Our wide experiences in these matters as they apply to International Transfer Policies in this part of the world will enable me ensure that your outstanding fund payment is resolved with immediate effect. Finally, you are to understand that you are not the only beneficiaries being paid this way as others have been receiving their funds hence we will not compel you against your wish to do what is necessary and have your fund released to you. Thanks for your anticipated response.

I will await your immediate correspondence with your direct telephone numbers to my private email address at (dr.raphaelwbostic@fedreservebnkgov.com) for re-confirmation so that we may conclude your payment immediately.

Yours Sincerely,



Federal Reserve Bank
info@fedreservebnkgov.com

[Chewbacca]

Always.

I was selling a car once and they reported ME to the site when I strung them along.

Not making this up.

[AzPaul]

Not an email, but a few weeks ago got a 'live' phone call about selling my house.
Told them I had just listed it with the guy who called 5 minutes earlier.

[Blansky]

Nope.

But it is rather eye opening that email scammers in the US make around 300 million dollars a month.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/email-sca...00mmonth-in-us

And phone scammers raked in 29 billion dollars in the US last year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/amer...past-year.html

And on a personal note I really don't want to have the Russian mob or whomever is behind some of this stuff decide to target me with whatever they are capable of, (identity theft, computer hacking etc) so I just ignore them/delete them.

[HHIslander]

About ~25 years ago when I was in grad school, I trolled one guy who was a caretaker for "Lady Armanda" who had millions for me. I kept communicating with him and told him to meet me at the airport in Nairobi as I was flying down there, gave him fake flight info, hotel and everything. I ran him around for a few days ("I must have just missed you, let's do breakfast?)", then he got really pissed and told me I was a bad person and going to go to hell.

[Mendota]

Originally Posted by Blansky

Nope.

But it is rather eye opening that email scammers in the US make around 300 million dollars a month.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/email-sca...00mmonth-in-us

And phone scammers raked in 29 billion dollars in the US last year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/amer...past-year.html

And on a personal note I really don't want to have the Russian mob or whomever is behind some of this stuff decide to target me with whatever they are capable of, (identity theft, computer hacking etc) so I just ignore them/delete them.

Wow. That's serious money. Yeah, I just delete and ignore too. My business is just bombarded with wire fraud phishing scams where they will pose as a random title company or real estate office or lender and attempt to hack the email of whomever opens the attachments. Then once in the email account, they will search for current threads involving current transactions and then pose as one of the various parties to the transaction in an attempt to ultimately reroute a wire when the transaction closes by pretending to be someone involved doing a last minute "change." A good friend of mine owns one of the largest title companies here and a few years ago they had two situations involving hundreds of thousands of dollars that got wired to false wire instructions. During forensic audits with a former FBI agent who is now a cyber security consultant, they figured out when and what happened.

In one case they actually got the money back! The police and FBI refused to help, but the consultant had a friend who was still an active agent and he helped them with tracing of some of the steps the wire took on its path around the country. The banks involved had all given up and were just going to let the insurance company pay out the loss, but suddenly my friend received a phone call one day from a random guy down in Texas. The guy was crying and said he was an immigrant and small business owner. He said he received a $250,000 deposit into his account and then a phone call later that day saying if he didn't go to his bank and wire those funds to a new set of wire instructions overseas, they would kill him and report the rest of his family to the INS. Instead of complying, he went to his bank, asked what bank sent the wire, and then Googled the bank that sent the wire to him. The bank is a local bank here and the president is friends with my friend, so they all knew about the situation. Nobody expected a call though. They gave the guy my friend's main office line and said his company was the account holder. They had about a half dozen people on speaker when the guy called. He said he wanted to give the money back because he was scared about what might happen.

In the end everything went OK and none of the scammers were here in the US, but it's important to note that the local police refused to even talk to them and the FBI just hung up on them when initially reporting the incident. They will not help with wire fraud because 99% of the time the wires exit the country and then the tracing stops. The insurance company didn't care either and just wanted to pay out the cyber insurance claim and be done with it. They only got this resolved because by the grace of a higher power, the random guy that the scammers picked as their mole happened to be a good person and returned the money instead of being bullied into sending it on.

[superdog]

I do not. I am too chickens!t.

I am fearful that they will then turn their attention to me. I would prefer they fail and move on.

I don't need any more headaches.

[Chewbacca]

Originally Posted by HHIslander

About ~25 years ago when I was in grad school, I trolled one guy who was a caretaker for "Lady Armanda" who had millions for me. I kept communicating with him and told him to meet me at the airport in Nairobi as I was flying down there, gave him fake flight info, hotel and everything. I ran him around for a few days ("I must have just missed you, let's do breakfast?)", then he got really pissed and told me I was a bad person and going to go to hell.

This is the way.

[Mendota]

Originally Posted by HHIslander

About ~25 years ago when I was in grad school, I trolled one guy who was a caretaker for "Lady Armanda" who had millions for me. I kept communicating with him and told him to meet me at the airport in Nairobi as I was flying down there, gave him fake flight info, hotel and everything. I ran him around for a few days ("I must have just missed you, let's do breakfast?)", then he got really pissed and told me I was a bad person and going to go to hell.

That's funny!

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by Mendota

Wow. That's serious money.

Yup. With the scope of the amount of money involved, the people behind some of these scams have to be MAJOR players, experts with computers and know-how to make money disappear/ become invisible to accounting and tracing.

That's what would scare me about who is behind it.

Since 9/11 and the way money traveling around the world is so very much scrutinized, the capability of these people is pretty scary. I guess bitcoin is part of the way to disguise money but I'm sure there are other ways, the big boys know how to deal with it or are state (foreign country) players.

[Burlington]

Nope, worse thing you can do unless you want ten times more spam sent in future to that email address.

[Mendota]

Originally Posted by Burlington

Nope, worse thing you can do unless you want ten times more spam sent in future to that email address.

Exactly. I can't do it because these all come to my business email, so I just ignore and delete, mark as spam. Just curious if other people have ever messed around with these idiots.

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk

[Boothroyd]

That's the issue...they aren't idiots in many cases. They are extremely savvy. Anything you do in response can confirm information to them, IP addresses, all that...and make it worse.

See a rattlesnake hissing at the side of the road? Don't go over and poke it with a stick.

[Mendota]

Originally Posted by Boothroyd

That's the issue...they aren't idiots in many cases. They are extremely savvy. Anything you do in response can confirm information to them, IP addresses, all that...and make it worse.

See a rattlesnake hissing at the side of the road? Don't go over and poke it with a stick.

Agreed. In my business they are incredibly savvy and sophisticated to the point where the entire banking industry has adapted to put protocols in place to try to prevent this from happening, yet it continues. Gone are the days of the Nigerian 419 jokes, I suppose.

[chro.nic]

You shouldn't be posting the links OP, someone may click on them.

.nic

[Old Farmer]

Few years ago , I received the usual response from a Nigerian pretending to be a NYC Doctorto a Rolex Seadweller I had for sale on the Bay, anyway, I strung him along for a while and he said he was on holiday in New Zealand, I responded by saying, what a coincidence, so am I, I thenadvised him that I would bring the watch to him, did he have the money with him, nope, said he has been called back to the USA urgently, anyway, he asks me to mail it to him, sure no bother, how will he be paying me? Up pops a dodgy Paypal receipt and I say, good O, its ready to go, send me your address. He sends me a street address in Nairobi,so I wait and he emails back and asks why hasn,t arrived, more games form me, delaying etc, he gets all cranky and says he is going to report m,e to the Police for fraud, True story..

[Knappo 1307]

Originally Posted by superdog

I do not. I am too chickens!t.

I am fearful that they will then turn their attention to me. I would prefer they fail and move on.

I don't need any more headaches.

This^^ Just not worth it...