Hi, I just got this email titled "unhappy mood"

The return name is a very well known E A with Elvis hair do. It reads.

...........................
Hello,

How are you doing? I am sorry for reaching you rather too late due to the situation of things right now..I'm stranded in Istanbul, Turkey and had my bag stolen from me with my passport, mobile phone and personal effects therein. It was a terrible experience for me thank God the embassy has just issued me a temporary passport but I have to pay for a ticket and settle my hotel bills with the Manager before leaving.

I have made contact with my bank but it would take me 3-5 working days to access funds in my account, the bad news is my flight will be leaving very soon and but I am having problems settling the hotel bills. Please let me know if I can count on you I promise to refund the money back as soon as I get back home

Regards,
.........................
I assume it to be fake, has anyone else got this type of thing?

Almost certainly fake. I think I got a similar one a number of years ago. Someone probably got their email address hacked at an internet Café while travelling!

Hi, thanks. I am sure now.

I did an ISP location check. It came up with..NIGERIA, LAGOS, LAGOS.

E-mail hijacking happens lots of times-----but people still do fall for these scams from Nigeria.

What?

So I sent 1200 dollars for nothing?

it wasn't for nothing, you made someone happy and that's not a bad thing.

I received the same email from my supervisor at work. I advised him that I thought someone was spoofing his account and, after thanking me, bemoaned the fact that no one sent him any money.

Its not just emails......

my father in law (now 74) had a phone call last year. He was on the phone for 40 minutes. It was all to do with his gas bill. there were lots of issues that had to be sorted out. After the phone call he sighed and said glad that's sorted! His wife asked what and he explained. Then he realised they had phoned him and in the course of the call he had given out his bank details card number and security code from the back...... He soon phoned the bank and put a stop on his account. they got a couple of hundred and he explained what had happened. He felt very stupid after the event.

The best bit is that .... he worked in a bank all his life and was manager for many many years. If a bank manager can fall for it anyone can. He's is not a stupid man at all and is unbelievably cautious about everything and he thinks everything through a million times before acting.

Its all down to the script - enough pressure, ask for small bits of info and teases out the bits you need. I'm sure many people are caught with this sort of thing....... otherwise they would not bother!

So Ian feel free to send me the £500 instead.

Someone once phoned me (!) and told me he was either from the ISP or Microsoft (I cannot remember which) and that I had a nasty virus on my computer and he was there to get rid of it because it was disrupting other computers. Very well scripted. Unfortunately, he told me I had a Windows virus and my computer wasn't windows. Ooops. He hung up after I told him that it was impossible that I had a windows virus...

Very brash - don't know what he was after...

The idea is to get you to download a program to solve the so-called virus issue.
The program you are supposed to download will give them remote access to your computer so they can down everything and steal your identity.

Mmmm may be he should have tried a n out along the lines of "no the windows of your house....". There is a list of "funny" lines from ICT help lines - including one where the help line asked the woman to close all of her windows. The line went quite then she came back on and said "right done that" and the help line realised she had got up, gone all round her house and closed all of her windows and not the ones on the PC. Great list - even if half of it is made up.

Yep, a few years ago, my daughter nearly got sucked into the "overpaid babysitter" scam. Turned them into the FBI, though I have my doubts as to whether anything came of it. A few years back, there was a fellow who characterized himself as a "scam baiter." He would seek out these scam artists and lead them on before dropping them (often costing them money in international phone calls or airfare). Of course, I heard of him because he had a fundraising campaign to raise money for future scam baits, so it might've been a scam.