The John Lewis stores are very well known across the UK with more than 40 department stores and hundreds of Waitrose supermarkets.
So, an email from someone claiming to work for John Lewis and asking us to provide our products to the stores group is surprising, but obviously a scam.
The grammar is reasonable but a little odd e.g. “Indeed we are interested in your products, we would like to know if you can provide them”.
The message sender claims to be a “Senior Executive Purchase” at John Lewis but his email address is a Gmail account.
The scammer has created a fake email address at johnlewispartnerships.com, but that is not John Lewis at all.
Just a dumb scammer with a simple lying message, looking for gullible people to reply.
If you are in business and are unsure whether such an email offering to do business with you is fake or real – lookup the real contact details for the business and contact them directly, but never reply to unsolicited emails or text messages.
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The latest 419 scam is titled “Inheritance Discuss” and is from goonhooh65. He claims to be Mr Wilson Victor and the boss of a bank in Abidjan and his problem is that he has to transfer $160 million to an overseas account and needs your help. Of course, you will receive a big share of the money for helping. The message starts with ‘II wish to inform you that this letter is not a hoax mail’ but the only people who need to use such language are scammers. The end of the message is the funniest part as it is fake Latin ‘Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet’ etc. Many people will recognise this as the text used in computer software to indicate some text should replace it. This scammer forgot to read his own rubbish before sending it out.
Brendan Wardill offers a list of web sites where you can advertise without charge and get huge volumes of traffic to your site. Obviously lies. There are websites where you can advertise without charge but they make use of your website links, insist on reciprocal links and don’t give your site any worthwhile traffic – only robot generated fake usage. The only links that are worthwhile are from websites relevant to your website’s content.
Notify @ringscentral.com tells me there is a new audio note from a contact in my address book and I just have to click the link to listen to the message. Never heard of ringscentral.com so is bond to be a con, plus they obviously don’t have access to my contact list, or the name of the sender would be showing. A simple scam. Never click on links in unsolicited emails.
An email in German but also translated into English – seems to be a mark of a lazy scammer who cannot be bothered targeting her scam emails by country. This one claims to be from Lerynn West who has a donation of 1.93 million Euros for me as she won 349.3 million Euros on the Powerball lottery. A straightforward 419 scam offering a fortune, but I would have to make a series of small payments to get it and of course the millions only exist in the mind of the scammer. This scammer is so dumb that she sent this email and one a few minutes later with almost identical words and figures but supposedly from a different name.
Some scammers take a minimalist approach. An email from wyanhtun says “Dear Sir, Please see attached document and action Thanks.” It has an Excel file attached but opening that would be a very bad idea as all Office documents can contain macros i.e. computer code.
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UK travellers visiting the EU are used to getting the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) for free which covers health costs while in the EU to the same standard as if back in the UK.
As of first January 2021 that changed as the UK is no longer in the EU so why should UK citizens get free medical treatment?
If you already have an EHIC card then it remains valid until it’s deadline.
For pensioners and a few other cases, new medical insurance will remain free for travel to the European Union, but for the majority it is finished and we will have to pay for travel medical insurance in the E.U. as we already do for the rest of the world.
Scammers are starting to offer free EHIC – just click the link in the emails and fill in your details to get the free cover.
But the messages are fake and the websites are fake – just a means to get your personal information that can then be sold to other scammers.
Lots of scammers try to entice people with stories of magical pain relief without drugs. They are always fake of course. This latest set of emails claim “Eat this before breakfast to remove all pain”. This magic remedy also claims to cure diabetes which is an odd combination even for a scammer to claim. All lies as usual.
“Scientists scream after this invention proves to be 12 times more efficient than solar panels”. Eye-catching but rubbish from a stupid scammer. 12 times more efficient than solar panels would be well over 100% efficient which is obviously impossible. This scammer even claims the invention is from God. Pathetic.
“Put 10 drops of this on your tongue to melt away belly fat”. A catchy opening line for an email but is just the usual rubbish from the mind of a scammer. This message even has pictures of fat people to try to convince the reader that they look terrible and must buy this miracle ingredient immediately. There is no such ingredient just the scammer’s greed.
An email claiming to be from Tesco Clubcard offering my last chance to win “??150”. I assume the question marks are where the scammer didn’t now which currency to pick even though Tesco is a British store. My email system recognised that the message also contains Slovenian and offered to translate. No thanks. Just a scam.
An email arrived, trying to look like it came from Amazon with the title ”Your Amazon order cancelled”. The contents were quite short with the key part being “We could not process your last order due to a mismatch in your card / billing address. Choose either of the alternatives – Return and complete or Cancel order here.” Obviously a fake message from a scammer and the links actually went to licbluewaffletaco.com which is just made up rubbish.
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An email arrives, supposedly from the United Nations, from an office called The Grant Payment Center.
The sender doesn’t know my name so there is a general purpose greeting on the email ‘Attn:”
The opening lines are:-
“It has been brought to our notice that you have not been paid your long overdue grant payment by the UN. This is due to some corrupt hoodlums, and some corrupt government officials who try to divert your money into their own private account. We have arranged your payment through…”
Surely anyone sensible would realise immediately this is a scam – the United Nations obviously don’t give out grants to individuals and especially without knowing the person’s name and if so any money would be paid by bank transfer not through an ATM card as the email goes on to describe.
The last paragraph of the email contains the following instruction
Note if you are not ready to comply with the obvious delivery fee out of the two-delivery options Mr. Mark Brown will send to you, please do not bother to contacting him.
I assume this scammer is fed up with people replying then not being willing to pay him the fee he’s after, which is the whole point of the scam.
Perhaps scammers have to work harder to con people these days – I hope that is true.
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UK National Lotto tells me I have won £800,000 through my email address. I just have to supply the usual personal information – name, address, nationality, age, occupation, gender, mobile number and so on. I have to send this to an official at a Chinese bank who has a personal email address. Could anything possibly me more fishy than this? I think not.
Two emails arrive a couple of hours apart, but from the same name (Sheryl Goedart) and email address. Both tell me I have been awarded $1.8 million by the sender, randomly, as she won $396 million on the Powerball lottery and wants to give away a lot of her winnings. However, the emails are to different email addresses at the radio station and she has no idea who the messages are going to. If I had millions to give away I would want to know who I was trying to give it to. But then, it’s just a scam of course. There is no money.
Carolyn Otiz sends me an email to say she remembers me in a video clip – click to watch. No thanks ‘Carolyn’ as you don’t know my name and no doubt the video is some random rubbish you get paid for getting people to click on.
A long winded email arrives from ‘Mrs Jeana Cofer’ and tells a story of how she was scammed by Africans and tried for years to get her money back and eventually travelled to West African and found a lawyer who got her $5.5 million in compensation. The point of the email is to recommend to me that I contact him immediately as he will get compensation for me, for the times I have been scammed. These scammers seem to think that they have scammed so many people now that they to go back for a second attempt to previous victims by pretending to be on their side. Pathetic, as is anyone who believes that having been conned out of thousands of dollars means you will get $5.5 million in compensation.
Some scammers spoof their email address i.e. fake the senders email address to be the same as the person they are emailing. This is to try to get around spam filters, but it doesn’t work and just points out that the message is a scam. This latest such one claims the sender is due a settlement from us and we should click a link to see the explanation. No thanks.
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