The Dead or Alive Scam

An email arrives with the title:

“*****ARE YOU DEAD OR ALIVE ********”.

Seems a little serious but is just the opening to a standard advance fee scam.

The message claims to be from a barrister at the International Monetary Fund, although his email address is not of the IMF.

The gist of the message is that two men have presented themselves as my agents at the IMF ready to claim on my behalf, a sum of $12.5 million that is due to me.

They claim that I died of throat cancer some months previously and they have power of attorney from my estate.

This may sound very strange but many scammers do love their complex highly improbable stories.

The message says I just need to forward proof that I am alive otherwise the money will be paid to the two men.

Proof in this case means providing identification documents along with personal details such as my address and date of birth.

This is all just a scam to get my confidential information to be sold to other criminals for identity theft purposes.

The second half of the scam in many cases is the advance fee part where I would have to make a small payment for release of the millions of dollars and of course there would then be another payment and so on until I realise there is no pot of money and give up.

These advance fee scams come in many guises but any offer of money or valuables for essentially nothing is always a scam. Only the scammer wins.

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Stupidest Spam of the Week Breakfast Trick

The message claims to be from “Dead Metabolism”. That’s not a subtle start.

It begins with “Before you eat breakfast do this ONE shockingly simple “morning trigger” to activate and turbocharge your dead metabolism…..  It takes just 10 seconds of your time.”

So, it’s another common scam with some magical means of almost instant weight loss.

“Penelope does it every morning and has dropped 49lbs..”

“Nicholas lost 45lbs with this bizarre trigger and no dieting or exercise..”

“Verity lost 33lbs in time for her wedding day..”

“This metabolism turbo-boosting was previously known ONLY to the inhabitants of a small island in the Indian Ocean, but now it’s possible for YOU to see too”.

That’s the usual fantasy stuff intended to convince the reader that it works.

The second half of the email has a page of text copied from a history of British Columbia.

British Columbia’s political history is typified by scandal and a cast of colourful characters, beginning with various colonial-era land scandals and abuses of power by early officials (such as those that led to McGowan’s War in 1858–59). Notable scandals in Social years included the Robert Bonner Affair and the Fantasy Gardens scandal which forced Premier Bill Vander Zalm to resign and ended the Social era. NDP scandals included Bingogate, which brought down NDP Premier Mike Harcourt, and the alleged scandal named gate which drove NDP Premier Glen Clark to resign. A variety of scandals

Scammers add this kind of text to try to get past the email providers scanning system that delete the most obvious scam and spam messages

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KB and the Police Officer Scammer

A post by K.B. Beaumaarks

I am an educated professional with an upper level income. My scams occurred not with an outsider but a partner…. yep first with my ex-husband who was a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine then to a boyfriend who was a Police Officer. Two professions that were “trustworthy professions” I was blinded by the scammers that they were. My point is to trust your gut no matter who the person is. If it feels wrong…. chances are it is wrong.

When I met my second husband, he was a charming police officer who stated he had made lots of money working for an additional company outside his police job.

He lived in a beautiful expensive home. He was a veteran of the police force for over 23 years and appeared to be well respected. I had made quite a bit of money after my divorce in real estate investments and lived in a nice home. I began to develop a relationship with him and felt very comfortable with him. He was a respected police officer. A law enforcing professional of 23 years.

He had asked to borrow money because he had gotten into a cash flow problem but had a real estate deal worth a million dollars. He presented me with a contract, I showed it to a real estate agent friend of mine and she said it was a legitimate contract. I felt comfortable knowing he paid $200,000.00 for the property and was reselling it to a Physician in the area who was very well known and very financially set.

He had a contract on the land for over a million dollars. He said to write him a check for the paper trail and write in the memo that it was a personal loan to him so I had evidence that it was a loan not a gift. Long story short, the contract fell apart but eventually sold for less but still doubled his money.

The police officer boyfriend basically said he was never going to pay me back and good luck trying to collect because he knew every judge in the county etc.

I sued him and he filed for bankruptcy after blowing every dollar he had made on the land deal. I trusted both my doctor husband and boyfriend police officer. Just because someone appears to be financially set or has a certain title, please research and follow your gut instincts or it could be financially fatal.

Con artists and scammers come in all professions and backgrounds. Do not be naïve and trust your gut!

See https://fightback.ninja/kb-married-to-a-scammer/   ?????????   for KBs post about her first husband.

I have written a book called The Preah Secrets and it deals with my veterinary husband and how I discovered his heist and how I followed my gut to eventually discover his intentions of deceit. I prepared and eventually sought justice for myself. I hope the book inspires others to follow their instincts and remember, scams can happen to anyone by anyone.

The book is available at Amazon and other places.

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

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The Please Read Me Ransomware Attack

In 2020, around 250,000 MySQL database servers were attacked in a very large scale ransomware attack.

The victims were threatened into paying a ransom or else see their confidential documents revealed to the public.

The campaign has been known as “Please_Read_Me,”

Two variants of this attack were seen in 2020. The first was the standard encrypt the files and then demand payment in Bitcoin payment for the decryption key and the second included the use ‘leak’ web sites to publish documents until the ransom is paid.

How This Happens

How This Happens

MySQL is a database management system.

The attack starts by finding those databases with Internet access and tries every password in the dictionary and all common passwords to see if it can login successfully.

If successful, then the attack runs a series of database queries to determine the contents, then zips the data and sends it to the scammer. It then renders the user’s database unusable by deleting all data.

Ransom notes are then left on the user computers and they must pay in Bitcoin to regain access to their data.

Read the full Guardicore Labs write-up for more details at www.guardicore.com/labs/please-read-me-opportunistic-ransomware-devastating-mysql-servers/

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

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