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.