Scam or Really Bizzare Spam?

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Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:41 am

I normally just ignore e-mails in my catcher account with the word "sale" in them, but this one was just too strange. So strange, in fact, that I reckon it might be a scam...

I mean, the lad-esque grammar, the pointless backstory, the saccharine and yet completely inappropriate introduction, the fact that it's sent to BCCed addresses, the Kafkaesque website (not to mention their odd variety of items), and, last but most certainly not least, the price of $12 820 for a set of shitty-assed wagon wheels that look like they'd been carved by a chimpanzee.

Message below, headers directly below that. There were also a few photographs of the products included, but they don't deserve to be posted. I'm sure that if you want to torture your mind by looking through that website, you'd come across them eventually; although, I don't particularly recommend that.

Letter wrote:

Dear Value Client,

How are you? We highly hope everything is quite good and you probably look for more interesting Asian products to satisfy your customers better.

Frankly, many months ago, there was an Australian client requesting to order 100 teakwood wagan wheels as showing in attachments but right now he could not buy them because of the economy down turn.

All wagon wheels are old Teakwood and really used in our Thai farmer life. They're 100 cm. diameter, roller thick is around 6 - 8 cm., the hod of a wheel is around 45 - 47 cm. wide.

We only need around 7 - 10 days for cleaning, waxing and export packing them for the transportation. The transportation from Chiangmai, Thailand to your nearest sea port in your country normally takes around 28 - 38 days. So, they'll be there within 1 - 1.5 month.

If you're interested in this clearance sales, we're glad to especially sell 100 wagon wheels included all transportation at totally only USD 12,820 for all for N O W ! ! !

Please consider our very best price and try to find some business opportunity for us. Thank you very...very...very much. I highly hope to hear some good news from you soon ! ! !

Sincerely yours,

Ittachai Chakpitak

E-mail : [email protected], [email protected]
Website : www.ThaiTradePoint.com

ThaiTradePoint.com Co.,Ltd.

109/27 Sukhothai Tanee Village
T.Sanpulei A.Doi Saket Chiangmai 50220

Header wrote:

Delivered-To: [me]
Received: by 10.220.94.196 with SMTP id a4cs400285vcn;
Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:26:26 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.114.185.12 with SMTP id i12mr8493338waf.123.1248153983765;
Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:26:23 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from mail.porargroup.com (host188.porar.com [203.150.230.188])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id m28si11297141waf.2.2009.07.20.22.26.15;
Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:26:23 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 203.150.230.188 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [email protected]) client-ip=203.150.230.188;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 203.150.230.188 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [email protected]) [email protected]
Received: from thaitradepoint.com ([127.0.0.1])
by mail.porargroup.com (IceWarp 9.4.2) with ESMTP id CMV84312;
Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:26:12 +0700
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:26:12 +0800
Return-Path: [email protected]
To: "[email protected]"
From: "Ittachai Chakpitak"
Subject: Asian Clearance Sales for YOU ! ! !
Message-ID:
X-Mailer: IceWarp Mailer 9.4.2
X-Priority: 3
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary="b1_cd98c1da10811ac625d8aa3716b54fc1"
X-Spam-IndexStatus: 0

Details wrote:

from Ittachai Chakpitak <[email protected]>
to "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
date Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 10:26 PM
subject Asian Clearance Sales for YOU ! ! !

What do you more seasoned baiters think? Advance fee fraud, or legitimate (albeit schizophrenic) businessman?

Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 11:20 am

At first glance the website and company seem legit.

ThaiTradePoint.com has been out there for quite some time:

Quote:

Creation Date: 07-mar-2000
Expiration Date: 07-mar-2011

Email sender matches the email address on the website also ..

Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 12:41 pm

..and let's see you try and shift 100 teak wagon wheels without looking crazy! Very Happy

Maybe he was baited into making them?

Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 1:09 pm

^

Poor dropbox owner ... Laughing

Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 1:19 pm

Googling 'thaitradepoint' returns a lot of results.
Hard to say if this particular mail is from any genuine company or not, but having said that, I certainly wouldn't risk buying anything from them. Some quite nice woodwork on that site though.

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 3:44 am

GordonBennett wrote:

Maybe he was baited into making them?

Wow. Just, wow.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 41

I'm going with spam.

The barrel thing looks kinda neat.

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 8:35 am

Oh, by the way: clicking on links in unsolicited emails, like I appear to have done, is silly. 9 times out of 10 some Russian or Vietnamese cyberhaxor will be trying to own your computer and your bank account, and the other time you'll be confirming you're there and you read their junk. So don't do it. Ever. I did it using a virtual machine, and if you don't know what a VM is, you definitely shouldn't click on them.

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