Easy Money in your Mail - NOT!

review from ClifNotes, Jun 2007, permalink Bad Email

Under review

I received this email today. It's not often spam reaches me because I use Gmail and it has very good spam filters.

Nautical Petroleum Plc.
Northumberland House
25 Petersham Road Richmond, Surrey TW10 6TP.

Would you like to work online from home/temporarily and earn constant
payment?We are glad to offer you a job position in our company,Nautical
Petroleum Plc ...

full text here if you want to read it

Sure! I'd love to make easy money. However, this email smells very fishy to anyone with a good nose for this sort of thing. I decided to send it on to Brett Christensen at HoaxSlayer. Brett has one of the best noses in the business for sniffing out scams, hoaxes, and other bad emails. Here's my letter to him.

Hello Brett,

This (email above) sounds like a shady operation. Would I be right in guessing it's a way to clean up dirty money?

Side Note:
Today in snail mail, we received two checks in the mail. One was from Multimatic Wheel of Fortune for $87,000 USD. The other came in the same envelope and was for $8,600 USD.

Wow! Becky and I have struck it rich! We'll going for a long vacation in Tahiti. I'll talk to you next month when we get back ... LOL

No, seriously, we've gotten these before and I'm familiar with the idea behind it. We call a phone number (usually an untraceable cell phone) and are told to deposit the smaller check and send them real money immediately.

These guys are real (expletive deleted)
Clif

And here is Brett's reply. Be sure to check out his links.

Hi Clif,

Yes, you are right, this is a typical money-laundering scam. For more information, see:
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/lottery-scam-cheque.shtml
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/money-tranfer-job-scams.shtml

People need to be really careful of these. I've been communicating with a person whose wife has been charged with fraud after she tried to cash a cheque as instructed by the scammers. Poor lady apparently thought it was legitimate.

Cheers,
Brett

That's all folks!
Be sure you never answer any mail like these and never put a large check in the bank that you aren't expecting. You could wind up losing a ton of money or worse, you could go to jail.


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