Asking for money from friend's email box

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Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 10:48 pm

It has happened to me twice in the past month. I have received email messages from two different friends' mailboxes (residing in two different countries), telling me basically the same story. That he is stranded in London, England, because somebody stole all their money and to please send them $2,500 (or equivalent in British Pounds) via Western Union to London under my friends' name with the typical question and answer.

I traced the last message and it comes from Nigeria (couldn't trace the first one because of lack of full header in my hotmail inbox). But they do ask that the money be sent to London (where evidently another lad will pick it up).

Questions:

1. Is this becoming common now?

2. How do the lads get into other people's email boxes?

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 1043

Phishing most likely.

Yeah, It's quite a popular scam, but I don't know if it's more popular, or you've just been unlucky.

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 5:22 am

Your friend's email address may have been hjacked. I have heard of this happening before now. It may be that some one forwarded some of those chain letters around and they were harvested from the open CC list and compromised.

Phishing is a way criminals get into email and other accounts. Evil or Very Mad

Some schemes like this have also been done with cell phones that are stolen by thiefs and the thief/scammer calls parents or loved ones claiming to be speaking on behalf of the kidnapped person whose phone they are using and says that money needs to be sent to set the loved one free. Mad

I am sure you checked on your friends in Real Life and they are fine. Thanks for the reminder!

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 7:01 am

A UK joournalist reported that it had happened to him a few weeks ago, and about three other cases have been reported in this forum. It does seem to be on the up.
WU payments can be picked up anywhere in the world, so it's unlikely to be done in London.

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:42 pm

In fact as the scammer says he's in London, that makes it the least likely place he is!

As mentioned above, those crappy 'forward this to everyone in the world' junk mails that come around building lists of 'x knows y well enough to Fw this shit' for anyone interested. It's then possible to spoof the 'from' address in emails and send targetted scams. Or in this case it may just be phished login details and using your friends address book.

Either way your friend needs to change their email password and email their friends saying 'no, I'm not in London and don't need your help'

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 4:11 pm

It happened to someone I know. His account was phished and then taken over by the lad, who spammed everyone in the address book. Ultimately one person did send $4K. Evil or Very Mad

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 4:46 pm

Did you check if there is any Reply-To header in the mails? Maybe the source-address has simply been spoofed and when you hit the reply-button it'll send to a completely different address.

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 5:23 pm

The journalist's account of how his email account was hijacked is at
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/14/scamsandfraud.internet

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:28 pm

In my friend's case the account was hijacked, not spoofed. I'm sure there must be some instances where lads are spoofing, but not always.

Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 11:54 am

Spam is often spoofed as the spammer doesn't want to receive bounces, and complaints.
I can't see it being much use to a scammer, as replies would still go to the real owner of the email account.

Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:48 pm

Thanks for all the info, from everybody. I now have a clearer understanding of how this is done.

The accounts were hijacked, probably because my friends revealed their passwords in some phishing site. Replies went to the same accounts. In the first case the genuine owner reported the hijacking and managed to get the hotmail account closed. In the second case, the lad kept the same password, so my friend was able to access his account and change the password.

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 6:30 am

I haven't had my yahell account spoofed yet, but I did receive spam from myself. Have changed the passwords a couple of times since but it is an odd sight

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