Posts Tagged ‘Bcc’

Dog lovers beware! That “free” puppy could cost you thousands of dollars.

Unlike most species of email fraud “adopt a puppy” fraud appeals to the victim’s better nature by providing a chance to rescue a puppy.

Everybody loves puppies right?

On the other hand, since the puppy to be rescued is usually of some desirable breed and therefore might be worth several hundred dollars, the victim’s motivation might still be greed.

Either way, there’s no such thing as a free puppy (at least not from some stranger that emails you out of the blue).

(more…)

In today’s email fraud post we will be discussing messages that are intended to appeal to your patriotism (and greed). These messages pretend to be from soldiers in the field. More specifically, from “military personnel” looking for someone to help them smuggle large amounts of some valuable commodity out of a war zone.

This type of fraud asks you to believe that someone you never heard of has found a large cache of cash (or gold, or diamonds, etc.) in Saddam Hussein’s summer home or in an unguarded bank (like in the movie Three Kings) and needs your help to get it out of whatever theater of operations they claim to be in. You are expected to trust this person because they’re fighting for your freedom, never mind that they’re trying to involve you in a criminal conspiracy. Besides, the government would probably just keep the money so it’s better that you and the unknown soldier split it instead (so much for patriotism).

The following is one of the best examples we’ve seen in a while:

(more…)

Today’s fraud lesson is about mules. A mule’s role is part victim and part accomplice.  The job of a mule  is most often to launder money or receive and re-ship goods.

Mules are needed because, although it is easy for criminals in one country to obtain credit card information from victims in other countries, it is not so easy to use stolen credit card info to obtain goods. For example: buying a big screen TV on the Internet with a U.S. issued credit card and having it shipped to Benin tends to make the card issuer suspicious. Having it delivered in the U.S. and re-shipped to Benin works better; for that you need a mule.

The following is an example of a typical mule recruiting attempt: (more…)