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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