Like many people, I receive a lot of spam emails. However, when this email from the FBI recently turned up in my Spam Folder, it caught my attention.
Upon opening it, I was shocked to find that it's actually a scam email supposedly sent to me by the FBI! I say supposedly because I don't believe the FBI actually tries to scam people (at least, I hope not!). And as far as I know, the FBI doesn't have any Hotmail accounts (at least, not official ones).
Clearly, this was sent to me as harassment, since I don't see how anyone could take it seriously, and I receive lots of harassing emails anyway.
The worrisome part is that whomever sent this to me was so brazen as to use the FBI as a cover. It's seriously disturbing to realize that someone deliberately used the FBI name and information to harass me with no apparent fear whatsoever of being prosecuted by them!
An official complaint has been filed over this email, but as yet, no one in law enforcement has contacted me about it.
7 comments:
That's just one of those scam emails from Africa and the like to get people to send them the money with the promise of a bigger sum at a later time. People get them as spam all the time, I wouldn't worry about it. The use of "FBI" was to make it seem important and legitimate to people who don't know any better. Just delete it and block your email address OR check online and see if a national cooperation is collecting these. I know Dateline NBC was looking into it and they can get in touch with organizations who are trying to track these people down.
The writer of the above comment seems to have missed the point, namely that the sender of this email is so unconcerned about being prosecuted by even the highest levels of U.S. law enforcement that they have no fear of actively using the name and other official information from the FBI to further the scam. I doubt that any African scammer would be foolish enough to try this!
I can only repeat that this does not appear to be a serious attempt at a scam, but rather is harassment sent as a way of bragging that the sender is aware they are above the law. I have posted it not as a warning about a serious scam such as those made public by NBC's Dateline (although, heaven knows, there are plenty of those out there!), but rather as a catalyst for a critical and much-needed dialog about what it means to live in a country where criminals operate openly and without any fear of law enforcement whatsoever.
For another blatant example of this same kind of in-your-face disregard of law enforcement, please go back and re-read my earlier post titled "False Bravado", in which the writer of the examples shown openly brags about committing various crimes on a national forum under a name comprised of their own street address!
Sweetie, this email was submitted by original IP 41.191.85.241. This IP is owned by AfriNIC, an ISP based in *drum roll* Africa.
It is a garden variety Nigerian "319" scam originating from Africa and has not one thing to do with harassment.
Yes, since I posted this, I have learned that this is a known scam. When I originally posted this, I included the question mark in the title because I wasn't completely sure about this, as a matter of fact. However, I still contend that it's disturbing the way the FBI knowingly allows scammers to use their name and identity without doing anything about it despite receiving complaints. I'm also more than a little curious as to exactly how the spammers got hold of my email address.
See:
http://medawarscornflakes.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/bent-american-police-federal-agents-how.html
The DOJ website page on reporting police corruption was hacked years ago to divert users to a website run by a fraudster who not only bilked would-be complainants of thousands of dollars each, but who also tipped off the corrupt police they were trying to report, with details of the attempted whistle blowers. It was belatedly, several years late, taken down after this post about it was put up.
The FBI scam e-mail was reported to the FBI at the time as ML's post was published, patiently going through every single step of their published procedure for doing so. They did nowt.
Both ML and her daughter were targeted by a flood of scam e-mails at the time, including some very threatening ones to the daughter, all of which originated in Guatemala City. There was a very strong impression that this was the ex-husband/estranged father passing e-mail and other personal details of both ladies onto anyone he thought would do them harm with the information.
There's a strong impression now of one of his mates going through the nethermost reaches of this blog, trying to scoff at anything which might get him into trouble.
Regarding the ex-husband. The writer of this blog identifies him as Hektor Seven, a troll who harasses almost everyone on topix forum "Gangstalking Debate." He started the forum under the name of Reginald Frinton and used to monitor the Norwalk Ct area topix. So who is this person? He does strike me as narcissistic...and grandiose at times.
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