Faith Can Move Mountains... But Dynamite Works Better

Monday, October 16, 2017

The Old Wood Forest Scammer Ploy


No matter what we do, they never give up. Spammers regularly attempt to leave spam in our posts, spam that is inevitably locked up by spam filters and tossed into the eternal purgatory that is the spam folder. Yet they carry on, targeting posts that are often more than a year old. And then there are the scammers, sending off email that winds up in our junk mail folders anyway. Such was the case with the following, which turned up in my junk email recently.


MR. Timothy Hicks
Wood Forest National Bank Ohio
Central Business District,
Cadastral Zone,OHIO USA

Good Day,
How are you? What is keeping you from responding to our mails? The
world bank have approved our bank as the rightful bank that will
handle all the out standing fund own by foreigners. We have contacted
you couple of times yet there was no response from you.  Meanwhile I
have received mail from Mrs. Stacey Lekas saying that you ask her to
contact us and claim your $2.5 Million fund is that true? Also she fax
us a power of attorney saying that you ask her to claim your fund on
your behalf.

Bellow are the bank account details she provided to us for the
transferring of the fund.

Bank Name: Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)
Bank Address:  200 Bay Street P.O. Box 1, Royal Bank Plaza Toronto, ON M5J 2J5 Canada.
Account Holder: MRS. STACEY LEKAS
Account No: 74527097777
Routing Number: 759rbc
Swift Code:xxb854
Please confirm to us if truly you are the one or not that ask her to contact us for the claiming of the fund. You are only advice to
contact us on this email address ( woodforesttimhicks@gmail.com )

To enable us attend to your payment files, you are required to reconfirm and authenticate your personal data/particulars as listed below for onward processing and release of you fund as we will not be held liable for any wrong payment.

FULL NAMES: __________________________________
CITY: _________________________
STATE: __________________________________
ZIP: ______________
COUNTRY________________________________
SEX: _______________
AGE: __________________
TELEPHONE NUMBER: _____________________

Ensure you follow all due process as required by Account office in order to hasten up the whole procedures of your fund transfer to your designated account. Bear in mind,that the WOOD FOREST NATIONAL BANK equally has an operational operandi (payment protocol) in line with international banking policy. So, you should adhere to avoid any delay which maybe detriment your fund transfer.

Timothy Hicks


Well, where to begin? For starters, how about the fact that despite that email address listed in the totally scamming scam of an email, Mr. Timothy Hicks sent it through another email address , one marked ceo.headoffice at aol.com. Is AOL even still in business? Second, yes, there is such a bank in the United States, but it's Woodforest, not Wood Forest. You'd think an actual official from the real bank would know that. Third, while central business district is in fact a term designated for infrastructure, it is not formally used in an address. And fourth? Cadastral Zone? Well, Cadastral refers to a survey of property boundaries, but there is no place called Cadastral Zone in Ohio. What you do find when you google the terms Cadastral Zone Ohio are a series of posts on internet scammers.


And we haven't even gotten into the bulk of the scam message yet.

He asks why I haven't responded to his mails. Well, because this is the first I've ever heard of you, and I already hate the name Tim Hicks. I can picture the words Tim Hicks on a dart board, that's why. Then he follows with "the world bank have approved our bank as the rightful bank that will handle all the out standing fund own by foreigners." Uh huh. Right. A real banker, which you are not, would understand grammar and proper phrasing and capital letters and phrase it as "the World Bank has approved us as the rightful bank to handle outstanding funds owned by foreigners." Which they wouldn't do anyway, because that's not their procedure.

Then our nitwit friend insists that someone named Stacey Lekas started all this bull by claiming I've asked her to contact them and get this two and a half million dollar claim started. That's nice. Particularly since I've never met anyone or known anyone by that name in my life, let alone communicated about seven figure money paydays with such a person.


There are the other tell tales. Bad phrasing comes back to haunt us when Tim, or whatever his real name is, tells us "she also fax us a power of attorney" as opposed to "she faxed us a power of attorney",  and of course "you are only advice to contact us..."

What takes the cake is the closing lines: the Wood Forest National Bank "has an operational operandi (payment protocol) in line with international banking policy. So, you should adhere to avoid any delay which maybe detriment your fund transfer." 


Wait a minute, what? Who says "operational operandi"? Modus operandi I can get, because let's face it, you're scammers trying to commit a crime, but "operational operandi." Seriously? And "maybe detriment your fund transfer."  Who writes this crap, and what bad Google Translate program are they using?

Nice try. Go have another go at someone else on your list. It won't work with me.

For my part, I'll just sit back and imagine you getting what you deserve.

14 comments:

  1. Good message
    I am amazed there are still news reports that people lost money to scammers. Then I remember there are lonely people out there with zero tech savvy that get caught up in the emotion drama, and forget good sense. I feel sorry for them. And not happy scammers still get through.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't know what you're talking about. That looks perfectly legitimate to me. Just like the one I got that assured me it was ambient of the law.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am forever amazed at scammers and spammer's audacity. Though I do wonder about those who fall for them. (But then I am a professor and the level of stupid I deal with daily makes it pretty clear WHY people fall for things like this...)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, one of the world's problems is that we've got no shortage of stupid people. I sometimes think we need to take the warning labels off things and let nature sort them out.

      Delete
  4. You could have told him to go ahead and mail it to Stacy. Then she could worry about it. Naw, they'd probably find someone by that name and try again.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh, well, I've got one that says the U.S Government and Nigerian/African Government have agreed to pay comersenation{not a typo] to all scam victims sum of $650,000 ... you think I should take this up???
    Wow.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm so glad I have a good spam filter.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mine's pretty good. Every once in awhile a Thai spammer manages to break through the photoblog and post six or seven items.

      Delete

Comments and opinions always welcome. If you're a spammer, your messages aren't going to last long here, even if they do make it past the spam filters. Keep it up with the spam, and I'll send Dick Cheney after you.