The old friend-in-trouble scam — just arrived this morning

by Charlie Leocha on March 18, 2011

These days, scams seem to be in the news, but they have to do with charitable donations to earthquake and tsunami victims. But, in spite of natural disasters, scams are an ongoing problem and come at us every day. Common sense and learning from experience (hopefully the experience of others) help us not get fleeced.

Just this morning, I opened my email and found an email from a dear, old and dead friend. Intrigued, I opened the email since it didn’t seem to have any attachments and found this tale of woe.

Now, I have heard of these kinds of scams, but I had never received one personally. Of course, I have heard from every Nigerian with a million dollars that needs to be hidden from tax authorities or dictators, never from a bona fide friend; and a dead one at that. Here is the email that opened.

from Arthur Heller
reply-to ahellerrcpa@xxxxxx.com
to
date Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 5:47 AM
subject SAD NEWS !!!(Arthur Heller)
signed-by yahoo.com

hide details 5:47 AM (1 hour ago)

How are you doing? Honestly, I’m doing pretty awful here! I’m with on a short vacation in London,England and a lot of crap has been spewing.

I got mugged last night in an alley by a gang of thugs on my way back from shopping, one of them had a knife poking my neck for almost two minutes and everything i had on me including my cell phone, credit cards were all stolen,quite honestly it was beyond a dreadful experience for me but looking on the bright side i wasn’t seriously hurt or injured and am still alive so that is whats important.

I’ve reported to the cops here and canceled all my cards,it appeared I had acted quickly enough or they almost would have succeeded in cleaning out my bank account. I’m really having some difficulties clearing my hotel bills and also need to pick up a voucher ticket at the counter for me to catch a flight back home in a couple of hours.

I was wondering if you could please loan me some money pending when i get things straighten out and I promise to refund as soon as i arrive home safely.

Thanks
Arthur Heller

Heck, if I didn’t know this guy was dead, I would have reached into my paypal account and sent something to help him along. (Well, not really.) But, I have heard of many who have.

So, in the interest of education, the email is here for everyone to see. Beware. I tried to see how the email was addressed, but that section was blanked out. So, I’m not really sure which of my email addresses this scammer has. But I know I should be careful.

Have any of you experienced online scams? Or ingenious scams while traveling? Tell us your stories.

Photo: barbaranixon, Flickr Creative Commons

Print Friendly

Tagged as: scams

  • Peter

    An acquaintance of mine in Argentina somehow had her contact list compromised and a letter very similar to this one was sent to everyone she knew. I believe she finally had to change her email address – and notify all her contacts – in order to stop the scam.

  • BJ

    I received one just like this a couple of weeks ago, except that the traveler was on a short vacation and robbed in a car park in Scotland. The police were not cooperating. One tip-off was the use of “car park” instead of parking lot, since “car park” is a frequently used UK term, and the supposed sender was a US citizen. The “sender” is a very elderly relative whose e-mail account had been hacked. She uses WebTV for e-mail.

  • Doug Edmonds

    I received such a request with almost identical verbage about three days ago. This was from a living friend and I immedately recognized it as a scam, since I know that he would never make such an appeal and he has plenty of resources to take of such a situation.

  • Dave

    I recieved almost the exact same e mail a few weeks ago. Concerned my nephew whom I was talking to on FB at the tiime. We both had a good laugh over it but had figured out pretty quickly that it was a scam. Turns out his cell had been hacked and they got ahold of his entire address book. He very quickly put out a notice that he wasn’t in England and hadn’t been for a long time. Told me later several other friends had received the same E mail. Something needs to be done to track these e mails but I am not that computer savy so I am just going to have to rely on some common sense to prevent being scammed.

  • Carrie Charney

    I am currently being deluged by the “You’re current account has been closed” scam from various banks. Funny thing is, they are always (so far) from a bank I’ve never done business with. I forward them to “abuse” at the legitimate bank before I delete them. Don’t know if the bank ever follows up on the scams.

  • baasbaas

    Look at the senders’ @blahblah.com or whatever it is. If you don’t recognize it or if it looks odd……DELETE!
    If you do respond, ask a question that only the real person would know the answer!
    Print the e-mail and send it to your state’s AttorneyGeneral office.

  • Richard

    Someone got into my wife’s hotmail account. First they changed her password. Then thsy sent an email similar to what you got to everyone in her address book. Most of her friends know that she travels and sometimes internationally.

    We got many phone calls from her friends and relatives. Her niece actually got the person on the phone. One of my wife’s friends actually sent some money. We of course returned it to them.

    This particular scammer was reported to the police and to Microsoft. I haven’t heard anything so I assume that he (she) got away with it.

    You have to be very careful.

  • dcta

    Last one I got, I replied, “So sorry to hear this!!! I’ve contact the US Embassy in London and they are expecting you to come in for assistance. Once you register with them, I can wire you funds.” Of ocurse, I never heard back and there were no more emails from that “friend” to any of her other contacts after my initial response.

  • Beth

    Forget the Nigerian scam, that we’ve all received. I got one of those “I have $5.5 million in the bank, help me get access the money” letters from a purported Libyan this morning. How quickly the scam info changes according to current events.

  • John

    One of my West Point classmates sent me one of these. We had a good laugh later on when the guy couldn’t answer basic questions about West Point. It was funny that the scammer attempted to interact and respond. I also did the …. I’ll send you money through the embassy routine.

  • http://www.exfelongirl.com/ Ex-Felon Girl

    I was hit by this same scam and wrote about my experience in my blog. http://www.exfelongirl.com/2011/04/freind-in-trouble-scam.html

  • Pingback: Scam Alert ! | Edna Adan University Hospital, Somaliland, East Africa

Previous post:

Next post: