Sunday, May 9, 2010

Does anyone ever fall for these scams?

This little gem arrived in my email today:

The Late Sir J. P. Getty bequeathed the sum of £9,708,692.70 to you in the codicil and last testament to his (WILL) which is eleven (11%) of his total funds of 88,260,443.00 deposited with one of UK's biggest financial institution. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

It is one of the better phishing schemes I've seen recently.  It's concise, the grammatical errors don't leap out and scream at you immediately, and it's definitely a nice appeal to the gullibility and greed we Americans are noted for.  After all, don't we all fantasize about being heirs to oil fortunes? 

3 comments:

  1. I'm still awaiting the fortune that nice Nigerian fellow promised me.

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  2. Amazing, isn't it? This stuff just keeps going 'round. Someone must fall for it, right? Or they wouldn't keep doing it?

    Or maybe, just maybe (she hopes, with the fervent hope of the hopeless) the gullible ones are the spammers, who keep sending this crap day after day after week after week after year after year in the desperate hope that someone, somewhere, will "bite," despite years of receiving nothing for their efforts...

    Hey, a gal can dream, can't she?!?

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  3. People do! Ive seen shows (To catch a con? maybe?) where they talk to people (usually older) who lose butt-loads of money to these people. Amazing.

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