Stupidest Spam of the Week Loner Businesses

The radio station receives hundreds of spam emails every week offering online services such as web site design, search engine optimisation (SEO), pay per click advertising etc.

Many are from small/medium businesses in this country, East Europe, Asia, America and almost everywhere else. It’s a lucrative market that’s easy to enter.

Most of the spam messages are from individuals as this work only needs one person, but they almost always claim to be part of a large company.

Why?

Perhaps they think prospective customers will trust a company more than an independent worker
They want to ‘big up’ their role
Maybe they dream of being part of a business rather than alone
They are lying cheating scam artists (true for many)

Whatever the reason, it’s usually very obvious that they are lying.

One of today’s special spam messages is from Lindon Newton offering to build APPS for us, SEO, e-commerce development etc. – the usual stuff.

His email address is a Gmail account, so he doesn’t have a company – no company website or email address.

But he claims to work for a big business and is Head of Marketing.

Nope – he works alone and probably is Head of Marketing, but also

Head of Production
Head of Development
Finance Officer
Human Resources Boss
Head of Acquisitions
Head of Coffee Making, Toilet Cleaning, Chief Spam Writer and Sweeper Up.

No thanks – if someone lies in their Marketing to get business, then you cannot trust them.

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November 7, 2020

Time-Wasters Update

Anastasia Bogolyubova from Strautmann and Sohna in Germany are very interested in our quality products and want us to send her a catalogue and payment terms. A standard scam message with an attached file containing malware.

TCE Electronics are keen to supply us with toroidal chokes and transformers as we have already shown an interest in such items. No – just a weird scam email. He claims to be named David, but his email address says Rose so perhaps he’s having an identity crisis.

Carol Patterson is the name on the email but no doubt that’s fake as the scam email is a very common one. “Over 160,000 women and men are using a simple and secret water hack to drop 2 lbs of fat every night as they sleep”. The random number changes but the message is the same so probably the scam works. It’s such a ludicrous email and clearly makes no sense – even claiming something is secret that 160,000 are using. That wouldn’t be a secret if it existed but of course it doesn’t exist except in the minds of greedy evil scammers.

“The Power-All Adapter Plug means no more household power costs ever” is another very common scam message and this one claims it is a gift from God and that many scientists preferred to flee than to face this life changing free energy miracle. The scammer seems to have been carried way with her own lies as it continues for pages – piling rubbish upon rubbish. There is no such gadget – just a scammer.

Apparently an ancient Indonesian herbal remedy wipes out your hunger pangs completely. It also burns tummy fat, is five times more effective than any workout and three times more effective than surgery. This scammer isn’t content with wiping out hunger but has to add even more assorted stupid claims for her magic remedy. She’s just a liar of course – there is no such remedy.

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November 6, 2020

Deal with Cold Callers by Questioning

We all get fed up with cold callers – trying to get us to buy products and services we have no interest in or the criminals attempting to get personal information, tricking, lying and conning for their living.

You can slam the phone down or decide to have a bit of fun at their expense and waste their time as they waste yours.

The cold callers expect to make a connection with you by asking simple opening questions such as ‘How are you today?’ then moving on to getting your personal details and/or convincing you to buy something or transfer money to them etc.

Cold callers have a script to follow – their set of questions and expected answers and if you behave unexpectedly – they don’t know what to do and will often give up i.e. put the phone down.

There are endless things you can do to confuse them, such as

Keep a take-away menu by the phone and start reading it out – place an order and ignore anything they say – just keep reading it out. E.g. I’d like to order 3 spring rolls followed by the Peking Duck with egg fried rice and 2 portions of crispy noodles and some of that seaweed stuff . Plus … and so on.
Say pardon to everything and just keep saying that when asked anything
Say ‘I don’t speak English’ to whatever they ask
Invent your own religion and try hard to convert them. I’m glad you called today as I have the good news of the 3^rd coming of Quixacoatl to tell you about. Now, Quixacoatl created the earth in 5 minutes and he’s due back tomorrow to collect all of the believers. And so on.
Accuse them of breaking into your garden and damaging your flowers. Claim you know it’s them. The more ridiculous your story the better.
Say Thank you for calling the PPI hotline – we can get your thousands of pounds back. I just need you name, address and bank details first. You’ll hear the phone slam down
In these days of Coronavirus, accuse them of breaking the restrictions by not wearing a mask on the phone. They cannot prove otherwise.

Any unexpected behaviour will do the trick – so confuse them.

Or you can confuse them with genuine questions

So, you could for example, tell them you are busy at the moment but will call them back at home that evening and ask for their home phone number. You wont get it – unless they fancy you of course.

If they say they can’t give out a home number then that leads in to the comment “I presume you don’t want anyone bothering you at home, right? Now you know how I feel!”

Or how about this example:-

“while I’ve got you on the line, I’ll just ask you a couple of very brief questions?

Where are you based?

Who do you work for?

What computer systems do you use?

What is your name?

What is the name of your manager?

It’s amazing how people who want to know so much about you are so unwilling to give you information about themselves.

So, annoy the cold callers by asking them personal questions they don’t want to answer.

If you have any good ways to get rid of the cold callers or have fun at their expense – do let me know, by email.

November 5, 2020

Famous Names Misused

This is a typical Advance Fee Scam also known as the 419 scam but it uses a living person as the bait, as well as inventing a fortune to be available to the lucky punter (victim).

The main part of the email is the standard advance fee scam where the scammer tries to sell you on the idea that he has a fortune to push your way at no expense to you. In this case, it’s an unspecified number of millions of dollars and whatever is invested you will get 30%.

The difference with these emails is that they hijack true stories for their own use.

This latest one uses the name Isabel dos Santos as the lady with the money to give away.

She is a real person – a multi billionaire and claimed to be the richest woman in Africa although she’s actually a Russian living in Angola. She is rich, famous and does give a lot of money to good causes.

Because she’s a real person, the scammer includes a list of links to stories in magazines such as Forbes about her.

She is obviously not stupid enough to give away money to random people contacted by scammers, but then she is not part of what’s going on – it’s just a scammer misusing her good name.

Just because part of a story told by a scammer is true does not mean anything else in the story is true.

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

November 4, 2020

Nancy’s Loss

Nancy’s story is about a romance scammer who took advantage of her vulnerability following the death of her husband.

Nancy says:-

I was getting used to the impact of losing my husband but the loneliness still haunted me.

I decided to join a dating site and received a message from Antonio who had lost his wife in a car accident.

Our friendship developed in time and I enjoyed listening to his beautiful voice which made me feel calm.

After 2 months he said he would come down to visit me and I agreed.

He sent me 12 long stemmed roses and I waited for his arrival, but the day before his visit, he phoned to say his worker in Namibia had made a mess of a minister’s suit and had to go there immediately, plus while waiting at the airport the courier company had delivered the new material and had to be paid immediately. He asked me to help until he saw me the next weekend.

I paid the amount and that was the start of these requests to do with his business.

I carried on paying but his visit kept being delayed by problems.

He kept on phoning and texting me and was very considerate and I trusted him. He got a customer to send me a cheque which I paid into my account and forwarded the money minus what was owed to me to Antonio.

But the cheque then turned out to be stolen and I lost that payment plus the money I had forwarded to Antonio.

He was supposedly on his way to visit me, but contacted me to say he was arrested by the Police for trafficking uncut diamonds. He assured me this was false, but he was in jail with no money and violent guards, so I sent him money to survive and pay off the guards.

I got fed up with this and hired an investigator to see what was going on.

Turns out he has multiple Facebook accounts in different names and spends his time conning lonely women.

I could not get my money back.

You can find more such stories at http://skywomen.co.za/index.html

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