I recently received an e-mail that was clearly a scam. Recognizing such e-mails is easy when you’re familiar with fraud, but, frankly, most people see through these scams. Lotteries, quick-cash business opportunities, and impounded fortunes—the stories behind these internet flimflams are hard to swallow. But some people do fall victim to these scams.
The important thing to keep in mind is that strangers do not randomly e-mail people with valid opportunities. If it sounds too good to be true, then it’s a scam. If they want you to do anything with changing checks to money orders, then it’s a definite scam. Now these criminals are spreading out to chat rooms, dating sites, and eBay type web stores. They prey on the greedy or naïve, and sometimes the elderly.
Such was the e-mail’s purpose that was sent to me. The e-mail read:
“I have a vacancy in my company. As I am just setting up in the USA I will be requiring Rep to work on a part time basis. I sell Arts all over the world, have sold to galleries and to private collectors, I am always facing serious difficulties selling my art works to Americans, they are always offering to pay with either Money orders/cashiers check, which is difficult for me to cash here in United Kingdom.”
Note the strangely capitalized “Arts,” which actually should be just “art.” The e-mail continues after some more poor spelling:
“The payment will be sent to you via regular mail or FedEx. When you get this payment which are for my Art Works, you will cash it at your bank, deduct 10% of the money for your effort and have the rest wired to me via western Union or money gram.”
Grammar aside, this person seems to not like money orders, but at the same time wants to be paid by money orders. The next part is where they ask you to illegally pass fake checks.
“Also you need to have a BANK ACCOUNT(I dont need of your bank account information) where cheque's can be cleared and most important you need to be HONEST with me, my painting starts from $2500USD and above and this contract will last for about 6 months till am fully establised in the USA. If you are interested,please get back to me as soon as possible. Regards James Bryant.”
With yet more poor grammar and spelling, the trap is laid. I especially like the “be HONEST with me” bit, which seems designed to suggest the con-artist trusts you—maybe even to lure in victims who see a chance to take more than their “share.”
Just out of curiosity, I searched for “John Bryant UK art” in Google. What I found was a website: www.fraudwatchers.org. This turned out to be an interesting site. Their forums had all kinds of information on how this “Bryant art dealing” scam had been done a number of times before. Apparently, IT professionals worldwide run this site blowing the whistle on known scams. It seems legit, but with all the crooks out there, I don’t even trust sites purporting to catch them. I did like the “scam checker.” You enter information about the e-mail you received into a checklist—information such as the scenario, some mannerisms in the message, and other tell-tale signs. It calculates the chances you’re being scammed. The odds that the above e-mail is legitimate are 1 in 1,000,000,000,000, which according to the checker makes death by space debris more likely.
So, delete those scam e-mails and never reveal personal information to strangers. The people that do this mostly live in other countries and will never be caught, nor will you ever see any money. If you’re not sure about any offer don’t trust it, and report suspicious activity to law enforcement.