Wild fire donation Scam?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 19

Not 100% sure about this one but it wound up in my catcher e-mail and it's got some of the hallmarks of bad spelling associated with the lads (namely piss poor word spacing) and the click here link doesn't work at all.

from "[email protected]" <[email protected]> hide details 12:59 pm (51 minutes ago)
to [email protected]
date Oct 31, 2007 12:59 PM
subject California Wildfires (Help donate)

If you would like your donation to support the Harris/Witch Creek wildfires, here is a good way to make your donations. Harris Fires (San Diego County)Thisfire has burned 70,000 acres and is five percent contained. The firestarted October 22 and is burning at Harris Ranch Road and both sidesof Highway 94 in Portrero in San Diego County.There have been 20 civilian injuries and one death as well as fivefirefighter injuries on this fire. At least 200 homes have beendestroyed in this fire - more than 50 were in Deerhorn Valley and HoneySprings. Citizens are shelterd at Fire Station 66. 2000 homes and 500commercial properties are threatened currently. 3000 people have beenevacuated in the Harris Ranch Road and Otay Lake Road. 275 firefightersare assigned including 175 CAL FIRE staff.

Witch Fire (Witch Creek Area East of Ramona, San Diego County)Thisfire has burned 165,000 acres uncontained. 500 homes, 100 commercialproperties, and 50 outbuildings have been destroyed. 250 homes, 75commercial properties and 50 outbuildings have been damaged. 5,000residences, 1,500 commercial properties, and 300 outbuildings arecurrently threatened in the communities of San Diego, Poway, Ramona, Escondido, Lakeside, Valley Center, San Marcos, and Rancho Santa Fe.Seven firefighters have been injured on this fire. A CAL FIRE IncidentCommand Team is in command of this incident with 1,492 firefightersassigned. Wildcat Canyon is closed. Highway 67 is closed from Poway toRamona.
And so much more areas have been affected by the wild fire,Residents forced to evacuate their homes and belongings are gettingsome help from Us.
NoAmount is too much or too small to help the victims of this unexpecteddisaster. Donations are received online via Paypal, click Hereor follow the link on the left. And if you would like to donate clothsor food take them to any Cal Fire or Red Cross Units near you. Thankyou for your kindness.

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

Lady Wolf wrote:

Donations are received online via Paypal, click Here or follow the link on the left.

Lady Wolf, can you go and check that email again, and where it says "click Here or follow the link on the left", hover your cursor over the link, write the url down and paste it here, cheers.

I had a look at the domain from where the email was allegedly sent:

www.califire.net

That domain was registered a few days ago on a cheap German freenet domain/email service, and I'm thinking that if it was legit, there would be some mention of it on Google, but there is nothing:

Quote:

califire.net (whois)
81.169.145.65, (reverse ip), docks04.rzone.de., STRATO-RZG-KA, [email protected]

Domain Name: CALIFIRE.NET
Registrar: CRONON AG BERLIN, NIEDERLASSUNG REGENSBURG
Whois Server: whois.tmagnic.net
Referral URL: http://nsi-robo.tmag.de
Name Server: DOCKS04.RZONE.DE
Name Server: SHADES01.RZONE.DE
Status: ok
Updated Date: 24-oct-2007
Creation Date: 24-oct-2007
Expiration Date: 24-oct-2008

>>> Last update of whois database: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:25:03 UTC <<<

Owner Contact:
Woodson Hagge

Alte Gasse 50
Frankfurt, 60313, DE

Punycode Name: califire.net
Unicode Name: califire.net

Admin Contact
Woodson Hagge

[email protected]
Alte Gasse 50
Frankfurt, 60313, DE
phone: +49 69928870

Technical Contact
Hostmaster Strato Rechenzentrum
Cronon AG Professional IT-Services
[email protected]
Emmy-Noether-Str. 10
Karlsruhe, D-76131, DE
phone: +49 72166320305

Zone Contact
Hostmaster Strato Rechenzentrum
Cronon AG Professional IT-Services
[email protected]
Emmy-Noether-Str. 10
Karlsruhe, D-76131, DE
phone: +49 72166320305

Record expires on: 2008-10-24 06:46:03

Domain servers in listed order:

docks04.rzone.de
shades01.rzone.de

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 19

Quote:

Donations are received online via Paypal, click Hereor follow the link on the left.

That's just the thing, I hover over it, and try to click on it but nothing happens, or pops up, and the text that says "here" isn't even a different color or properly spaced out from the word "or" so I think the Lad sabatoged himself by mis spacing the wording so he invalidated his own link Razz

(I wonder if he'll ever realize his paypal link is bogus, given his apparent lack of brains so far I'm guessing not..)

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 19

Also another strange thing I noticed afer someone kindly pm'd me to block my catcher mail addy from showing in the original post is the e-mail doesn;t even look like it's intended for my account. (I use a gmail catcher and this looks to be originally sent to a yahoo mail but wound up in my box somehow.

That would probably explain why the link to paypal wasn't working, but how did it wind up in my box? Fowarded perhaps?
OVERSIZE IMAGE

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

It would have been sent to you and hundreds/thousands of other recipients in the "BCC" field of the email, so you only see the Yhaoo addy it was sent o in the "to" field, there is a topic about another California fires scam here:

http://bravodelta.servemp3.com/viewtopic.php?t=122798

Can you repost your original email in the same topic, cheers.

Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 6:57 pm

Saw a news release about this stating that these wild fire scams are ramping up quickly.

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 1:24 am

This guy is in Nigeria. He's probably busy filling out my 17 page security form so I can wire my $50,000 donation. He's already provided me with his bank account information, but alas it seems that the account has been suspended Laughing