Posted on 03/14/2011 12:30:06 PM PDT by Leo Carpathian
Subject: Terrible Trip......Jxxxx XXXXXXXX
From: Jxxxxxxx
Date: Monday
To: undisclosed recipients: ;
I'm writing this with tears in my eyes,I came down to London England for a short vacation and i was mugged at gun point last night,all cash,credit cards and cell were stolen off,It was so scary just happy I still have my life and passport.
I've been to the embassy and the Police here thank God they are really helping with a return flight and our fight leaves in few hours from now,but we are only having problems settling our hotel bills before leaving I need you to loan me $1,650Usd to settle the hotel bills and also get a cab to the airport....I'll def refund it back to you as so as i get back home tomorrow..
Get back to me so I can tell you how to get the money to me here
Warm Regards. Jxxxxxxxx
Wow! Urgent email from a friend in distress:
From: Jxxxxxxx
Date Monday, March 14, 2011
To: me
Thanks for replying back you can wire the money to me through western-union all you need is name on my passport and location below.Please just wire any amount you have any amount you send will surely make a huge diffrence
Name: Jxxxxxxxxx
Address : 7 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4HQ, United Kingdom
Country: United kingdom
Kindly get back to me with the western union confirmation control number as soon as the money is been wired
Let know when you are going and how long it will take you to have it done
Warm Regards.
Jxxxxxxxx
I called J on the phone, no response. So I guess it is true. Stuck in London.
Trying to verify the email route, reading the emails, looks like J is in distress. Writing and punctuation are a bit off.
In the mean time, lets find out what it takes to setup WesternUnion account and procedure to wire the money. Jumped through the WU hoops, ready to wire some money from the credit card. Eamiling J, asking exact amount and to confirm email connection.
I get the phone call, very noisy line, voice almost uninteligible, sounded African-African, asking for confirmation number.
Back and forth few times. Asking to "give me time to do the transfer and get the number. Call me in 5 min."
Continuing the process with WU, use credit card for full amount, but it gets refused. (Thank you WU and CC)
Then I notice one extra letter in the email address and get suspicious, call customer service at WU.
IT'S A FRAUD!!!
Payment fortunately did not go through, credit card company flagged it and did not process the payment.
Scammer keeps calling me for the number. I keep asking his phone number and eventually get it: 44 702 409 8964
I call J again, and this time get him on the phone, safe at home, not stuck in England.
Turns out that scammers got the email and name from old FACEBOOK account, cancelled 2 years ago! Had access to some emails from the J address book and manufactured the email. Who would not want to help friend in distress, stuck at foreign country?
Sooo, the scam is: send the email to friend of "victim". Ask for cash wire transfer. Sounds sooo real. If you arrange cash transfer via WU and communicate the control number back to scammers, you are SCREWED. Thanks to WU and CC that they flagged and stopped this scam!!!
Hope you do not get taken, like I almost did.
Please alert your friends.
People on my contact list got this about a year ago. Took me forever to get back into the account. They also got into my FB page. It was someone in Nigeria.
The disturbing thing was that it was sent from another friend's account which had been hacked. A few calls to the family of the supposed victim quickly revealed the scam attempt.
Yes I got one of these as well from what appeared to be a friend of mine. The reason I new it was fraud was because my friend is a Navy Seal Commander.
The line about tears in my eyes LOL right - not very likely. And Mugged? probably not.
I called the guy and told him his hotmail account had been hacked and some creep was trying to scam his friends list in his name.
Most of these are not that hard. No personal contact (at least phone), no money.
And use the resources at hand to investigate. This scam is at least two years running.
http://www.cleveland.com/consumeraffairs/index.ssf/2009/04/facebook_scam_friend_stuck_in.html
This one is well known. Because they use your real friend’s info, some of these scams must be successful or they wouldn’t keep trying it.
My friends have average intelligence and wouldn’t fall for something like this.
Just another in a long list of reasons NOT to join Facebook and other so-called “social media.”
>> Writing and punctuation are a bit off.
Duh, yeah... in a Nigerian sort of way.
I replied "I am here"
Almost immediately got back "My family and I are in terrible trouble".
Now I know this woman is well off and takes flying lesson for example. I also know she is currently visiting family in Palm Spring. On top of that I am the most casual of friends (we belong to one common organization, but different clubs).
Given this, I was pretty sure it was a fake, so I simple saved a screen shot of our supposed chat and emailed her immediately. Of course, she was fine and appalled. I just told her to change her facebook password.
I guess for all of you, never believe anything sent to you on the internet. Always verify in person. For example you could have asked for the name of the Hotel in London and called them and asked to speak to your friend.
I am guessing the Navy Seal Commander isn’t the “sensitive” type?!
Our grand daughter lives about 60 miles from us, and we got a call saturday: This is xxx, I’m in trouble, I need help.
My wife had answered the phone: Where are you xxx, “I’m in Mexico. I need help.”
We are at least five hundred miles from Mexico, and the voice didn’t sound quite right.
“Grandmother, I need help”.
That did it, because the word is Nana.
Lot’s of scams going around.
Honest truth - I have an friend (an American) who WAS mugged in London a number of years ago. FWIW.
London England for a short vacation and i was mugged at gun point
Don’t ever click on links from sites you don’t know — particularly when they have some odd extensions (instead of .com or .org they might have .sk for example). I use facebook and there are a number of spammers posting advertising for this and that — such as free Ipads. You don’t get the free Ipad, but what happens is that the spammer can hack into your facebook account (or your email account if you opened the link from your junk mail). Then the spammer starts sending out email and posting to facebook under your name. Even worse, some hackers have been able to tap into your personal information, and if you have any identifying information in your email or facebook account (Social Security or credit card numbers for example), you are screwed. Get some good software that will prevent you from opening unsafe links and do your part by not clicking on links or opening email from anyone you don’t know.
They do strike gold from time to time.
Woman out $400K to 'Nigerian scam' con artists (Investigator: Worst example of scam he's seen)
Same thing happened to me, someone hacked my Facebook account and started sending messages to my friends and family on there, saying I was stuck in London with no money. Luckily I was at work at the time, so when my mom and sister called there I answered the phone and told them I was obviously fine. I put an immediate alert to all other friends and family that I had been hacked, luckily none of them fell for it. Dirty scammers.
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