Stupidest Spam of the Week Mailing List

Most scammers stick to one story and just keep trying to entice more and more people to fall for that story – maybe a 419 scammer offering a fortune to be collected or the usual phishing messages wanting you to login to check something or a romancer looking for victims and there are many other scams of course.

This scammer seems confused as the messages are clearly a 419 scam talking about $28 million but also the format is about building an email address list.

So, the main story is that the sender is dying of Coronavirus and has been a bad person but now has given away most of his possessions as she doesn’t want to go to hell when he dies.

She does however still have $28 million to get rid off and has selected me to collect the money and give it to charity on his behalf and I get to keep 40% for my troubles.

Most of the email and addresses etc. include the name Ken but the email also claims the sender’s name is Mrs Aimi Jack and she is an ‘epidemiology’. There are other obvious grammatical errors in the message.

Then the message switches to being about joining Ken’s mailing list, whoever Ken is – it doesn’t say.

There are endless options for changing passwords, re-joining the account, changing options, setting a new schedule for digest messages and so on.

All completely inappropriate for the first half of the message about asking me to help her “distribute” millions of dollars.

Does being a scammer for too long rot the scammer’s brain or do they all start out as idiots?

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Spamnesty Sharon

Spamnesty at https://spa.mnesty.com/ is a website for creating automated responses to scam and spam messages.

Below is a summary of one such thread of messages generated by spamnesty and the scammer’s replies.

The original scam message is a typical 419 scam – the sender offers the contents of a bank account belonging to someone known to the recipient and there is an odd story about why the recipient is the only who can get the money before the bank shuts down the account. That message is in German.

Spamnesty replies with a computer generated random response

‘Hello,
I talked to my colleagues about this but they seemed to have some apprehensions; namely, they’re worried that the offer isn’t fleshed out enough. Would you be able to go into more detail about exactly how this would be structured?’

As that reply is in English, the scammer switches to English as well.

‘aloha

what is your age?

Where do U now?

I need to consummate talks

I am alone chief 31 y.o. Lady born in Russia’

A strange response by the scammer who seems to have moved onto a romance scam instead of the 419 scam.

Scamnesty replies

‘Hello,
We need more details from you. My colleagues are worried that the offer isn’t fleshed out enough. Could you explain more about exactly how this would be structured?’

Next the scammer switches back to pages of details about the supposed fortune left in a bank account and offers to split the fortune 50:50.

Scamnesty sends a reply

‘Hi, Great, thanks. Could we have a short call to discuss the specifics? What are your contact details? Also, what is your pricing model like?’

The scammer seems to be confused again and sends another strange romance message with excerpts in French this time

‘Bonzur My:-) Let’s smooth small talk!
could we speak?
Where do You stay now?’

Another reply from Scamnesty and the scammer changes to German, then Russian and then Ukrainian and changes tack to offering website design services.

All very confusing, but it was Scamnesty that wasted the scammers time and the scammer got nothing from the exchanges.

Well done Spamnesty

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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The Website SEO Pitch Changes

Years ago, emails started to flood in offering website design services. Some were real offers by companies and many were real but from individuals as it is the sort of work that can be done easily from home.

Then lots of scammers saw this as an opportunity – offer these services but take the money and do nothing or subcontract at low cost to an idiot who will do a bad job.

After some years of this, the offers turned a bit more aggressive – stating such as that they had checked my website and found it lacking and giving a random general list of faults that they could fix.

These messages were annoying in their volume and being told our website was no good.

Some businesses offering website design moved on to saying that although our website was very good in some ways, it needed more work on some specified things. The scammers copied this new approach.

Again, these were general comments as the scammers never actually viewed the website they were talking about. When you are sending out these messages by the million – you don’t have time to actually view websites.

Then the scammers moved on to offering SEO services. After a while these changed into starting with insults about the lack of SEO on our site and how better SEO can bring in more customers.

You can see the pattern here – the changes often start with genuine businesses offering the services in a new way then the scammers catch on and copy the approach.

Next was social media optimisation and then onto web chat facilities and recently onto chatbots and some have moved on to AI chatbots.

A recent email to the radio station first of all compliments us on our great website design and SEO then offers statistics on why just getting people to the website is pointless unless you have an automated way to get them to make a purchase. The message has pages of boring stuff about how effective these new services can be and eventually some links for us to try their demonstration.

No thanks – any email that starts with a lot of lies about us and our website (however complementary) could never lead to business.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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Goldman Sachs Fined in Fraud

Goldman Sachs, one of Wall Street’s oldest and most prestigious banks was charged with conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids companies or individuals from paying foreign governments to retain business. The bank will have to pay $2.9 billion in fines over its involvement in a Malaysian bribery scheme.

$1.3 billion will go to the Justice Department; $606 million to Malaysia; $400 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; and $154 million to the Federal Reserve. The rest will be split among foreign financial regulators in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The Justice Department alleged that Goldman Sachs ignored signs of fraud among some of its senior bankers in a scheme that ultimately led to a Malaysian government-backed economic development corporation being defrauded out of $2.7 billion. About $1.6 billion was used to pay officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates to secure work issuing and selling bonds in international markets.

Goldman earned $600 million in fees for helping that corporation, 1Malaysia Development Berhad, raise $6.5 billion to support energy development in Malaysia, but much of the money was looted, with some used to buy luxury real estate and yachts.

The Malaysian branch of Goldman reached a $3.9 billion settlement with Malaysian prosecutors in July and pleaded guilty to violating federal anti-bribery law in a Brooklyn federal court. Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a Kuala Lumpur court for money-laundering connected with the scandal.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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