I almost fell for a Nigerian Prince Scam. For those unfamiliar, this sort of scam has a Nigerian prince (or other foreign dignitary) contact a victim for help: due to political unrest, he cannot access his vast fortune; he offers to send a large check and all you have to do is wire back a small portion of it so that he can free his family. The problem is that the check is fake, but due to a law in the US, it will initially clear. After a couple of weeks, however, the bank will find out that the check is fake. If the victim sent the money as asked, they now owe their bank that amount and, likely, overdraft charges.
I had heard about all of this years ago (Allison nearly went through with it once), but this one had a new twist: I was asked if I wanted to be a secret shopper for Wal-Mart. I thought that sounded pretty good, so I provided my contact information and asked for more information. A few days later I got an email from a different email address telling me (in broken English) that I had been approved for the secret shopper program. It continued by saying that I would receive a check that I was to use for my secret shopping experience. I thought something was fishy, but when no check arrived despite their promises, I figured that they had given up.
Then the check arrived on Wednesday. The letter gave me instructions to cash the check and transfer some money to some dude in Texas (they hadn't even bothered to come up with a fake business name) from MoneyGram and review the store from where I wired the money. I will give the scammer props for giving detailed instructions for the kinds of things to look out for (professionalism of staff, cleanliness of store, etc.), making it seem more legitimate. The big tip-off that it was a scam (in addition to changing the store I'd be reviewing) was that my "salary" was to be deducted from the check. If I'd gone through with it, I would have lost over two thousand dollars.
I took the check to work yesterday and sent it through the shredder and I've blocked the person from my email. I let my interest in something that sounded cool blind me from seeing some blatant warning signs. In the future, I'll need to be more careful.
1 comment:
If it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. I don't believe anyone that tells me I've won something. I find it difficult to be polite when I get those calls because I don't trust them. We actually have lessons we teach the middle school kids about detecting email scams. One of the signs to look for is poor spelling. Theses criminals use convincing logos. They are clever, but not educated when it comes to writing.
Post a Comment