In the film, The Transporter, there are several rules for using the courier service Jason Statham offers. One is "Don't open the package."
In this utterly ridiculous spam-scam, someone using a gmail address that Google should be required to verify rights to but chooses not to, is pretending to be a courier - and to know what's in the package. The silly thing is that even if he was a courier and even if he did open the package he would not know the information upon which the fraud is predicated.
It's clever. It's simple. It's even got a personal identifier in it (not that that's clever - and it demonstrates that it's scam - for reasons we aren't going to explain in public)
This is so amateur that it's worth our publishing it. The "reply to" address is at a free and anonymous mail account in Hungary: georgievakristalina01@vipmail.hu . But there is something interesting.
You just know it's going to be a fraud when the subject line reads "[email address], KINDLY GET BACK TO ME ASAP!!!"
When the "from" is a pretentious name for a law firm ('SMITH GLOBAL LAW') and the address an obviously fictitious "Smithlegaloffice@Un.org" The deal is almost sealed. That final nail in the coffin of the approach is the return address: Smithlegaloffice@mail.ru . If he'd sent from that, our filters which automatically delete undelivered and unread items from mail.ru would have meant it didn't reach its target.
But we're glad it did - for it's a demonstration of the cyclical nature of fraud. This is a genuinely vintage classic.
We can barely contain the laughter. This scam e-mail is the same old same old but unlike so many, it's beautifully written. But what's not funny is that Microsoft and Google continue to facilitate fraudulent conduct.
A very convincing e-mail is being distributed. It falsely claims to be from South Africa's ABSA Bank and, so far as this newspaper can tell, is distributed to a spam-list that was first produced by or for the use of a training company since when it has gone into the wild, so to speak. It does not discriminate geographically. It contains an attachment (Credit Card Statement.htm). The full e-mail is below.
It's a spam, it uses Standard Chartered as a hook to entice victims to be defrauded, and it's hilariously awful. Note phone number +447452282904 and email address lrbernal@easynet.es and that the reply is to privacy e-mail service ProtonMail at taxmattersjon@protonmail.ch . But the most interesting thing is this: the e-mail provider easynet.es correctly identified this as spam, even as " advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)" - then allowed it to pass. Is the provider complicit if anyone becomes a victim?
Most spam-scams are just too stupid for words. This one is even worse. Have fun with it.... and see why companies such as yahoo and google should be required to monitor anonymous e-mail accounts, if not for content but for obviously fake identities.
