Return Of The Annoying Scammers

They were something that Moses could have never saw coming if he was thinking of extra plagues on Egypt. They are an abomination that Nostradamus would looked on and have said, "you know what? This is too much." They infest the world and hope they can ensnare someone just gullible enough to buy this week's latest ploy. They're like rats, scurrying back into the shadows when exposed, and when one is, well... eliminated, more take their place. It's been awhile since I've last been bothered by spam comments turning up in my blogs. It's also been awhile since my email folders have caught much if any spam or scams. Until a few days ago.

It was just a short sentence, with an email address embedded the sentence (I've left that one out). It was sent, of course, by another email- one whose provenance is suspect at best, even while it does mention an actual person. Here it is.

You have been picked by Foundation De France. Email: for details

Well, that's nice. Picked for what? Their team for dodgeball? To join the Freemasons? To dig up the corpse of Victor Hugo? To find the real treasure of Monte Cristo? To pay homage to the two biggest egos in French history (Napoleon and de Gaulle, I'm looking at you)? To be a human sacrifice to Gerard Depardeau?

This is particularly surprising since I've never heard of the Foundation De France, let alone made any applications to anyone under that name. It turns out though that there is a Foundation De France (Fondation De France, actually), and if you google it and the word scam, you'll see a whole lot of entries on the fact that scammers are using its name as a cover. Some of the posts I saw there while looking about had the usual long winded scammer letters copied in full. Apparently these days the scammers using that organization as a cover are rather short and to the point, as opposed to using the usual rambling cover story about being a widow/ daughter/ mistress/ masseuse to a beloved reverend/ general/ president/ cult overlord.

Now mind you, the address listed, which I've not copied, has an Outlook address, unlike the real organization, which would have in-house email addresses. That's a big scammer tell-tale. Another being that they use the English spelling of Foundation and not the French translation, which is Fondation. Another being that they write in English. The actual Fondation writes exclusively in, you guessed it, French. So of course this is, in a word, bull, and the actual person behind this is some scammer in some part of the world with little in the way of extradition treaties (Nigeria, I'm looking at you) and able to burn their cyber trail with a moment's notice.

The sender is one Pauline Oldham (Oldham Pauline in the email header, but sufficed to say, nobody goes through life with the first name Oldham), supposedly with the National Health Service out of Stockport, Great Britain. The email address uses nhs.net, but a look at the contact email for the real Stockport NHS has the email address ending: stockport.nhs.uk. I would expect that any real staffer from the organization would also have that in their email address.

But the scammers would have us expect that a British staffer for their health program would be involved with a French foundation soliciting total strangers. 

Sure. 

Right. 

Uh huh.

Nice try, scammers, better luck next time.

We need to have ourselves a definitive way to get rid of you dirtbags once and for all. The Ebola virus would do the job quite nicely, I think, but there'd be too many ways you scammers could get away from the disease. I think, to borrow a phrase from Zeus, we'll just have to release the Kraken and let it finish you off.