Pew Pew Laser Blog

Unimpressive.

I was looking through the Junk Mail folder for my work email, and I found this obvious scam.

From: International Monetary Funds Organization [brittk2@rrohio.com]
To: info@email.com

Attention,

I wish to bring to your knowledge that your previous Won prize has been 
cancelled and you are now re-awarded sum of Seven Hundred and Eighty 
Thousand Dollars ($780,000.00) only on facts below :

A. Your Fiduciary Agent was discovered to be corrupt.
B.The Organisation want all Winners to claim their Won prize through Bank 
only and no longer want any of its winners to have anything to do with 
Agent.

C.The only Accredited Bank we now have as Affiliate paying Bank is Halifax 
Bank Plc.

D. We also discovered that you were too delay in claiming your previous Won 
Prize.

Now what you are to do is to send  email to the paying Bank HalifaxBank plc 
via email:
halifaxbnk_plc@yahoo.com.hk

and inform them of this development that you are One of the winners who the 
winnings has been re awarded.

You are also to send to the Bank the  followings :
1.Name :
2.Occupation :
3.Date of Birth :
4.Age :
5.Nationality:
6.Telephone Number:
A copy of this Notification mail.

Warning : You are not to have anything to do with your former Agent anymore 
as you will be disqualified if found still communicating with your former 
Agent.

Note : Your former Agent still have your information and might still be 
communicating through your email but we strongly warn and advise to desist 
with further communication with him because he no longer work for us and he 
has case to answer in the Law Court.

You are also to be forwarding to us all winning Notification email 
Notification receive from now henceforth so that for us to know how to 
trap your former Agent down for the refund of what he is owing.

Your Winnings has not been paid since as a result of your Agent 
Nefarous activities.Help us for us to help you.

Congratulations Once again.

Mrs Patrol Baker.

Wow. There are a couple clever tricks in this email. For one, the email doesn't come out and ask for any "red flag" information like address or SSN, making it seem like a low risk; but they're just fishing for suckers. Also, the thrill and threat (Congratulations and Warnings) combination of a "Nefarous" agent adds some exciting detail, which may dissuade rubes from thinking carefully about the overall plausibilty of the presented scenario.

Otherwise, his scam/span inspires a variety of snarky comments:

• I'm quite sure that the actual IMF can afford to hire English language copy-checkers.
• "yahoo.com.hk"? Hong Kong? Riiiiight.
• I am terribly amused by the thought of some poor child of the New Age who was named "Patrol" by their parents.
• Is the Law Court anything like Prinny Court?
• A "too good to be true" monetary prize for a contest I didn't even enter? How dumb do they think I am? Sigh.

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