A truly worldwide scam
Something called “UN Compensation!!!”, with that many exclamation points, showed up in yesterday’s email, and while it doesn’t at first look like a traditional phishing expedition, it is nonetheless every bit as phishy.
Opening paragraph:
United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) In Affiliation With Barrack Obama Campaign to Assist Scammed Individuals In The Settlement Of Disputes Through Intercontinental Bank plc.
You know, if I were affiliated with a campaign of the President’s, I might just want to spell his name correctly.
Which they did, further down the page:
This email is directed to all the people that have been scammed in all parts of the world, the UNITED NATIONS in affiliation with Barack Obama Campaign have agreed to compensate them with categorical payment sum of US$150,000 each. In its decision 17 of 24 March 2006, the Governing Council established basic principles for the distribution of compensation payments to successful claimants.
Given the usual distribution of the proceeds from class-action suits, the following looks almost plausible:
Only when each successful claimant in categories “A”, “B” and “C” had been paid an initial amount up to US$2,500 would payments commence for claims in other categories. Accordingly,the first phase of payment involved an initial payment of US$2,500 to each successful individual claimant in categories “A” and “C”.
However,for humanitarian reasons, all category “B” claims will be paid in full of a total US$150,000. A total of US$3,252,337,997.09 was made available to 1,498,119 successful individual claimants in categories “A”, “B” and “C” under the first phase of payments.
This includes every foreign contractor that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc. We found your name in our list and that is why you are receiving this email notification.
And now, the punchline:
You are advised to contact Dr Erastus Akingbola of Intercontinental Bank plc, as he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your approved bank draft of USD$150,000.
Incidentally, Dr Akingbola has an email address through a South African Webmail service, presumably because Nigerian email for some reason invites suspicion. He has, however, what appears to be a Nigerian telephone number.
J.S.Bridges »
29 October 2009 · 7:08 pm
So…you’ve already contacted the good Doctor, supplied your full I.D. and bank account numbers, and your “good faith” payment is, even now, on its way to that South African (?) contact address you received, right?
(Pssst! I promise not to say anything to anybody about this, provided, of course, you promise in return to send me a little “gratuity” – say, fifteen percent – when you receive that nice, fat check. KnowWhatIMean?)
CGHill »
29 October 2009 · 7:17 pm
As old friend Iago used to say, “Who steals my purse, steals trash.”
Brett »
29 October 2009 · 7:40 pm
What fiendish craftiness! Since the U.N. itself has been little more than a scam for the last three or four decades, the message has a deceptively realistic curtain behind which to hide!
CGHill »
29 October 2009 · 8:01 pm
Or maybe “crafty fiendishness.”
McGehee »
29 October 2009 · 8:02 pm
The only thing missing is the claim that it is the perfect country and western song.