bogus emails looking for money

Joel Burtram jburtram at gmail.com
Tue Apr 27 12:53:48 EDT 2010


I had a friend with an IDENTICAL story... Stuck in London, she had been
robbed and desperately needed money to get home.
Turns out her facebook account had been hacked (probably poor password
security).
Anyway, these guys even went as far as start chatting with me on IM (MSN and
FB chat), attempting to get me to wire money to some foreign bank.
Being a natural born cynic, compounded by bad English and too short answers,
I smelled a rat.  I tried to trap the person on the other end - started
asking personal questions that my friend should have known about my family,
that shut down the conversation and they immediately logged off.
I told her about the hack and then reported it to msn and facebook
"authorities", but nothing ever came of it.

AFAIK no one really cares, unless you have some physical evidence or a
location on the offenders.
Anecdotal evidence: Another friend of mine contacted the FBI in a different
internet scam (the old cash for cashiers check scam).  The local field
office asked him if he knew who the defrauders were or where to find them,
he didn't, so the agent thanked him for the report and brushed him off.

You could do some inter-web investigating on your own, but it's not easy to
track down black-hats in a foreign country who are relaying all over the
world -  you'll likely end up angry and frustrated.

Keep the group updated on any developments, I'm curious to know if you get
anywhere.

Good hunting.
-- Joel



On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Lloyd Kvam <python at venix.com> wrote:

> A friend's webmail account (@msn.com) appears to have been hacked.  I
> received a request to wire $1470 to London (UK) to help her out.  She
> was mugged and lost her cash and credit cards.
>
> Is there any place to report this sort of email that might actually do
> some good?
>
> I'll start with abuse at msn.com, but would love to find out about better
> alternatives.
>
> --
> Lloyd Kvam
> Venix Corp
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>
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