I recently received an email supposedly from the Anti-Scam Department of the British Secret Intelligence Service. They sent me an email because apparently my "email address signaled to our computer database today, with strong indication that you currently MIGHT be in a business transaction where you are a SCAM VICTIM unknowingly." Oh no!
In particular, they asked if I was:
• in a business transaction case that would claim millions of dollars
• told by a lottery company that I have successfully won millions
• told I had overdue contract funds
• promised to receive large sums of money in excess of millions of dollars
• promised to be awarded a contract worth millions or billions of dollars
If so, "there is a 99.99% chance that you are currently a victim of fraud/scam, run by notorious criminals known as con artists, with the sole aim of scamming and ripping you off your very hard earned funds!!" More importantly, I was now eligible for their assistance completely free of charge. To determine if I qualified, all I needed to do was send them the following information:
• legal name
• country of residence
• contact details
Clearly this above mail was a scam in itself and would be followed up by requests for bank details or funds to be transferred to them. These advanced fee fraud scams are known as 419 scams since many of them originated from Nigeria and the relevant section of the Nigerian criminal code was section 419.
Clearly the 419 scammers are getting more creative in their scam attempts and, in this case, pretending to be helping you if you were already scammed. Perhaps, the trusting remain trusting. As for me, I'm just eagerly awaiting the anti-anti-scam mails to arrive.