Ya gotta love em for entertainment’s sake; I receive a phishing email at least once a week. Some are good, some are just terrible. Some are very creative, and some are down-right funny.
This is one I received this morning:
FROM THE DESK OF:BARRISTER MORRIS OGIRI
Morrisogiri & ASSOCIATES GOVERNMENT REGISTERED ATTORNEYS DIRECT PHONE NUMBER:+234-80545-37721
Dear Sir
I am Barrister MORRIS OGIRI, a Lawyer by profession. I am the personal attorney to Mr. Andrew Tara who worked for the Chevron Oil Exploration Company, herein after shall be referred to as my client. My client, his wife and their three children are victims of the Boeing 727 Beirut-bound charter Jet which crashed on takeoff on December 25th 2003, see the below link to read more news about the air crash: > www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/12/25/benin.crash/ > Since then I have made several enquiries to his embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives. This has proved unsuccessful.I came to know about you through an enquiry I was making in the internet, and came across your profile hence i contact you, in order to assist in repatriating the money and property left behind by my client before they get confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank. Particularly, the Finance Company where the deceased had an account valued at US$ 8.5 Million Dollars, has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have the account confisticated within the next 21 official working days. Since i have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives I seek your consent to present you as the next of kin of the deceased , so that the proceeds of this account valued at US$8.5 Million Dollars can be paid to you and then you and me can share the money. Also note that I have all necessary legal documents that can be used to back up any claim we may make. All I require is your honest co-operation to enable us see this business through. I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law or any legal plight. The money will be shared in the ratio: 50% for me, 45% for you and 5% for any arising contingencies during the course of this transaction.Please get in touch with me by email and indicate: Your full name,your age,your occupation, your address, your contact telephone and fax numbers respectively. Upon receipt of these details, i will prepare a Letter of Introduction in your favour and send to the Bank where my client had the account for their payment endorsement and i will as well send you a copy for your view. I count on your anticipated co-operation.
Best regards,
BARRISTER MORRIS OGIRI
Morrisogiri & ASSOCIATES
GOVERNMENT REGISTERED ATTORNEYS
DIRECT PHONE NUMBER:+234-80545-37721.
They get more creative about the stories, but the basic grift is still the same.
The disconcerting thing is, these scams, for as funny as they can be to the initiated, still sucker people in.
I know it’s hard to believe that these scams still lure people in, but IMHO, we would see less of these if they were not succeeding on some level at bilking people out of their money.
Howzat? I’ve been getting the plane crash one since the '90s.
Though, this particular “barrister” has cleaned up the English
a little, and the names and company always change, it’s
almost word-for-word the same 419 scammail I’ve been
getting for 10 years. I wish they’d show some creativity.
Tyler, I’m afraid that your jaded outlook on life has blinded you to the fact that the Boeing crash referred to really did occur. Therefore the claims being made by Mr. Ogiri appear entirely legitimate to me, and I have taken action to make contact with him.
I don’t know why you would so quickly turn your nose up at 45% of US$8.5 million, but I am quite happy to relieve you of this obligation. Please don’t worry yourself about this matter any longer. It is well in hand.
A while ago in London a bloke who was found guilty of embezzling millions from his company claimed he couldn’t return the money as he’d lost it in a phishing scam. I’m willing to bet that he ‘finds’ it again about five minutes after he gets out of prison.
Contact me asap someone’s trying to pay for an item of mine with your paypal account/credit card.
I don’t think it’s you because they are avoiding contact through your eBay
account saying that they cannot access it.
This means that they somehow have your paypal or credit card details but they
don’t seem to have access to your eBay account.
Contact me through eBay using the respond now so I can give you more details … if you can’t use respond now email me at
They usually arrive when I haven’t had anything listed on e-Bay in ages. I forward these to spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com, or both, and let them die a natural death in the deleted file.
Here’s one I just recieved today (December 18, 2007) - notice that they couldn’t even be bothered to change the date I MUST reply by!
Bank Of America Online Alert Update Your Information
From: > bankofamerica@service.com >
You may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as unsafe
Sent: Tue 12/18/07 10:13 AM
To:
Dear Valued Customer :
We recently have determined that different computers have logged in your Bank of America Online Banking account, and multiple password failures were present before the logons. We now need you to re-confirm your account information to us. If this is not completed by April 11, 2007, we will be forced to suspend your account indefinitely, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes. We thank you for your cooperation in this manner. In order to confirm your Online Bank records, we may require some specific information from you.
To restore your account, please Sign in to Online Banking.
thank you for using Bank Of America Online Service.
\
Your account might be place on restricted status. Restricted accounts continue to receive payments, but they are limited in their ability to send or withdraw funds. To lift up this restriction, you need to login into your account (with your username or SSN and your password), then you have to complete our verification process. You must confirm your credit card details and your billing information as well. All restricted accounts have their billing information unconfirmed, meaning that you may no longer send money from your account until you have reactive your billing information on file. Sign in to Online Banking
Thank You.
Please do not reply to this message. If you have any questions about the information in this e-Bill, please contact your biller. For all other questions, call us at 800-887-5749.
If the email was generated by a robot virus on someone else’s computer, that might explain why the dates are so far off. Once the spammer has released these little bombs into the void he loses control of them.
I have a presence on MySpace. I was hoodwinked into it by a friend. She remains one of the very few REAL people I’ve met on MySpace.
I have, however received uncountable e-mails from girls in their early twenties who look like supermodels and think I’m the man of their dreams. For some reason there is rarely any indication that they have actually read my profile. Most of them are American, but for some reason or other they are presently in Nigeria.
I chatted with one of them in Yahoo Messenger. “She” claimed to be from NY, but was a nurse who was in Nigeria studying Malaria and Aids. It so happens that I know a very nice Nigerian girl who lives in NY, so I got her connected in a three way chat. It turned out the person in Nigeria was actually a man called Daniel who quickly went from trying to trick me into falling in love with a stolen photo and sending lots of money to Nigeria to trying to seduce my friend in NY into becoming his green card.
