Money laundering or 419 spam
SophosLabs regularly sees spam relating to “money processing” jobs. Typically, these spam emails contain phrases like
- import/export business
- making payments
- receive *% of each payment
- looking for representatives in USA/Australia/Canada/UK
The person sending you the spam will either steal your money/identity directly or set you up to have money stolen in the near future while laundering your money.
SophosLabs has recently been made aware of a scam that has all the hallmarks of this type of spam. I will be anonymising the names involved here - the victim will be Mr A and the conman and his associates will be Mr B etc.
Mr A posted to an online classified site looking for an apartment in New York. Mr B contacted him via the classified site saying that he had an apartment in New York that Mr A could use BUT would need Mr A’s help accessing money from clients in the US. Mr B then explained how Mr A could help. Mr B’s client Mr C would mail Mr A a check and Mr A was to cash that check and send it to Mr B via a money transfer agency.
This happened for a few days until Mr A got suspicious and contacted Mr B for confirmation of Mr C’s identity. Mr A then got a message from his bank saying that the checks had been suspended.
- What was happening here? Mr B was using Mr A to launder money.
- What should Mr A do? Talk to his lawyer and report all details to the police.
Mr A has unwittingly participated in mail fraud and/or money laundering.
Remember that if ’something looks too good to be true then it probably is’ and on the internet this maxim applies double.
Posted on October 8th, 2008 by Pob, SophosLabs, UKFiled under: Spam, Web
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