Official "419 Scam-Mail" Thread

[ewmayer]

Ruh-roh - I must've been very naughty, because I've been summoned by the HIGH COURT (not just *any* high court, mind you, the one-and-only, the one so dreaded that it needs no location qualifier):

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Ruh-roh - I must've been very naughty, because I've been summoned by the HIGH COURT (not just *any* high court, mind you, the one-and-only, the one so dreaded that it needs no location qualifier):

How cool that the court's clerk's name is "Court"

[retina]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Ruh-roh - I must've been very naughty, because I've been summoned by the HIGH COURT (not just *any* high court, mind you, the one-and-only, the one so dreaded that it needs no location qualifier):

I wanna see the attachments. Open them up and show us the contents. Thanks.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by retina

I wanna see the attachments. Open them up and show us the contents. Thanks.

Now why didn't I think of that? My readers obviously want to see details. OK, here goes ... ;>

[LaurV]

Bam, tok, crank, puff... puff...


(sorry, we won't see Ernst online for a couple of weeks anymore)

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Ruh-roh - I must've been very naughty, because I've been summoned by the HIGH COURT (not just *any* high court, mind you, the one-and-only, the one so dreaded that it needs no location qualifier):

Perhaps the court became a HIGH COURT by smoking dope.

Other online commentary here.

Getting the lucky recipient to open the attachments would seem to be the point of the exercise. From an alert about a similar one last year,

The malicious attachment contains JavaScript code that will attempt to download and install viruses, spyware and other malware onto the recipients' computers, if they attempt to open the Zip or compressed attachment.

[Dr Sardonicus]

And I've never even lived in Kentucky!

My answering machine took a robocall this past weekend (the message began in mid-sentence, because the bot is so unsophisticated, the incoming message started at pickup, without waiting for the greeting message to play).

It claimed there were "four serious allegations pressed on your name at this moment" and the local cops would arrest me if I didn't call within "24 working hours." It helpfully gave the number 502-205-5970 to call "so we can discuss about this case."

A Google search of the number showed that I had lots of company in receiving that message.

A comment at one of the sites that deals with this sort of call observed that one of the advantages of prison was, you don't get scam calls.

Amusingly, the voice sounded exactly the same as the voice from an earlier robocall, which had told me "the reason for this call is to inform you that IRS is filing lawsuit against you."

[kladner]

I have gotten the last call mentioned, more than once. I remember it as having a vaguely feminine robotic-sounding voice.

[ewmayer]

I recently got a call from some outfit running a phone version of the critical alert from Microsoft scam … some Indian-accented voice (with a supervisor audibly whispering coaching tips in the background) said “Hello, this is Windows tech support…”, to which I replied “I don’t own a Windows computer” and hung up. Was that too rude of me, do you think?

[Uncwilly]

An efficient use of your time.

[paulunderwood]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

I recently got a call from some outfit running a phone version of the critical alert from Microsoft scam … some Indian-accented voice (with a supervisor audibly whispering coaching tips in the background) said “Hello, this is Windows tech support…”, to which I replied “I don’t own a Windows computer” and hung up. Was that too rude of me, do you think?

I have watched many such scams on YouTube, where similarly people get a pop-up on their Windows machine to call support immediately. On YT they use a virtual machine and play along, even if they get "syskey"'ed. In some videos they say the money cannot be transferred to the perps without a little piece of software from their bank Or they instruct the unwise perp to do something that screws up their own system!