Unusual scam

Tringa

Numpty of the Day'
Messages
5,836
Name
Dave
Edit My Images
Yes
Many of us will have received a scam email that starts with the scammer introducing themselves, often alleging to be an official of a government or a company.

The email then says there is a large amount of money which they are willing to transfer to you. The reasons can be they have found you are a long lost relative of a person who has died, or they themselves are prevented from taking money out of their country because of the political climate and they want your help to do so.



Mrs T has just received a scam of this type.

The differences are she did not receive the scam by email, but by letter and it was addressed to her by name, both first and last name.

The alleged address of the sender, as shown on the letter, is in Kowloon, but the letter was posted in the UK. The only thing I can read from the postmark is it says, “Royal Mail Home Counties North”.

The scam type is that someone, who has no next of kin, has died(in an earthquake in 2009) and the scammer is proposing the transfer the funds to Mrs T because her surname is the same as that of the deceased person.

The interesting thing is the full name of the ‘deceased’ person is the same as our son.

Clearly it is a scam but interesting that it arrived by letter, is allegedly from Kowloon but was posted in the UK, addresses Mrs T by name and includes the name of our son.

I used Google street maps and Google to look at the address in Kowloon and it appears to a block where offices can be rented.

Getting the full name and address is probably not that difficult but to be able to use the name of our son appears virtually impossible. It could be a coincidence but the chances of guessing the first name of our son seems very low.

All thought welcomed.

Dave
 
Can probably be found from various places electoral register, websites like 192, social media etc.
 
There's nothing unusual about this, it's basically just a 419 scam, named after Section 419 of the Nigerian penal code, which it contravenes. I was getting letters just like this in the 70's, the scammers then moved with technology and sent them by fax, and now it's usually by email, but they still count on the greed of the recipient, and miss-spell everything to make themselves look stupid and uneducated.
 
Was/is the one on the telly this morning, only caught a brief moment and heard about letters and scam, phone rang and I muted telly.
 
I wonder as the letter originated in this UK is this attempt at fraud appropriate to get in touch with the police in your area and/or the Met who it seems have some national crime investigations powers?
 
The police pass these complaints on to their specialist department, which only actually looks at a tiny number they're useless.
 
They put grammar and spelling errors in to weed out the people that look more closely at the content.
 
Thanks for the replies, all.

I had wondered about the electoral register as some years ago(actually close to 20 years) our son was on the same electoral register as me and Mrs T.

Dave
 
Back
Top