Posted by Mr Spamalicious | Posted in Nigerian and 419 Scam Spam - Hidden Bank Accounts, Dead Aristocrats, Lotteries, and International Espionage | Posted on 02-01-2010
The concept is simple. Hack into someones email account and send this out to everyone in their address book and hope one of them takes the bait. I don’t know Stephen but I’ve gotten these from friends whose accounts who’ve been hacked (usually through a Phishing scheme). I guess he was so distraught and his eyes so full of tears he couldn’t finish the word family when he was typing. Alternately, these are sometimes just sent out to hundreds and thousands of people randomly in hopes that one of them has a friend named Stephen who might be on vacation in Europe.
I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,my fam and I came down here to Wales,United Kingdom for a short vacation unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card and cell were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.
We’ve been to the embassy and the Police here but they’re not helping issues at all and our flight leaves in less than 3hrs from now but we’re having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won’t let us leave until we settle the bills,i’m freaked out at the moment.
Stephen
Many thanks for this information.
I have received the same email from aunt Terry. She lives in USA. So, I know that email was not written by her.
My account was hacked today by these creeps, and since the incident I have gotten all sorts of responses from friends, family and coworkers inquiring about this. It affected both my Gmail and Facebook accounts. I’ve discovered that this virus comes about through the iPhone: if you downloaded new apps today, or anything through iTunes, it’s likely that those accounts, apps, etc. associated with it are compromised.
Has anyone else who’s been hacked have any insight? I’ve shut down both my Facebook and Gmail accounts, and simply waiting for an answer at this point. Everything is still inaccessible. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
This happened to my hotmail account a few days ago and I actually just got a new iphone. what do I need to do with apps etc, to get them out of my account. After two days struggling with Hotmail to regain access to the account, I was actually on the email trying to clean it out when they hacked it AGAIN and changed the password. What buttheads! I’m really not that attached to the email account itself–even though I’ve had it for 14 years–and they deleted all my contacts. But I have some emails in there I want to salvage.
I had the same unfortunate experience as Zuzanna, only the timing was even worse as those crooks timed it just the day that we were leaving a short in the Netherlands to drive home to the U.K. Hence it seemed more real that we had had a car crash. My account is with Yahoo and they have been absolutely useless trying to fix my loss of all my e-mail addresses and all my old e-mails.
Friends and family have been great and informed police and Interpol.
I sincere hope they will get caught and hence spare other people from this dreadful experience,
Gerard Lemmens
I am afraid you are not the only one ! I had mine hacked on 4 Oc t.
The worse thing is that the police, interpol and yahoo are not doing anything about this.
I had all my e-mail addresses and 8000 e-mail messages taken and yahoo have been absolutely hopeless about it.
Gerard Lemmens
I got this message yesterday from a Niece. Scary.
I got this SPAM too. What I don’t understand is I need a place to send money
LOL.
Stephen Woo said on 16-07-2010
“What I don’t understand is I need a place to send money”
)
————————
You’re supposed to send money to Wales. Sorry. Can’t narrow it down much further.
1st Welsh postal clerk (newbie): “Wot are we supposed to do with all these #$!% checks from Steve?!?!!”
2nd Welsh postal clerk (old timer): “I don’t know, but I did send him a lovely thank you note from my last holiday on the Riveria.”
(I just found this site today. Fun stuff! Useful, too.)
You made my day H.R.
Too fucking funny.
Sent back this response, William will no doubt think he/she has a sucker on the line and I’m going to play him/her like a teasing trout. LMAO
Dear William, what a terrible predicament to be in. I understand your plight as I too experienced the same thing while visiting Wales, my family was mugged by a pack of skinheads and we lost everything except our passports. Please tell me what I can do to help, how much money do you need to get home safely including limousine fare to get you home from the airport, meals, snacks on the plane etc. Advise me where to send the cash.
Lee
Of course the whole point of these spam emails is to get you to REPLY so they know they have a “live on” out there to send more spam to. They don’t care if you think it’s a scam or not, they just want to know that you are reading your email so they can send more crap to you. I would not waste my time with these folks unless you really have nothing better to do.
I just received an email with those exact words. it seems odd that this person would email me for the money because I haven’t seen her in over 40 years. I was just trying to find out what she should do and found the scam today.
Wait a sec! EVERYTHING was stolen, yet Steven can still somehow E-MAIL?!?! How about just a call for the money? What if it’s been three days since you’ve checked your e-mail account? The plane is long gone and the hotel has thrown him out and written off the loss.
Reminds me of Steve Martin in “The Jerk,” where he’s sitting on the sidewalk with everything he needs; his toothbrush, a comb…
Stephen: “I’ve got my laptop, my comb, and my fingernail file.”
I’ve sent you everything I have – cash, credit cards, and cell – now I have nothing but my passports. Can I come visit you in Wales?
They suckered me using my 2nd cousin’s name! Now I suppose they’ll be using MY email address to sucker somebody else. Damn!!!!
My hotmail account was hacked last night and a version of this ridiculous scam was sent out to everyone on my contact list (who at least are all smart enough to recognize this junk). I did, however, change all of my passwords everywhere and will dump hotmail forever. I’ve not lost access to any site except the hotmail account – once I’m back in (hopefully soon), I’m going to empty it out and shut it down. Ah, life in the fast lane…
If anyone wants to send them a nice old-fashioned strongly worded letter this is the address that came with the email that was sent to me:
Cowbridge Road West,
Cardiff, South Glamorgan, CF5 5BR,Wales
They almost suckered me in to… but I figured it was strange that such a distant relation was suddenly asking a 19 yr old they’ve never met for so much money -.-’
I just got hacked with this same thing. I had at least 30 phone calls from friends and family worried about me. HOW DO I AVOID IT IN THE FUTURE!!!
You may have done it yourself unintentionally through a phishing attack. A friend of mine gave his Google account info away doing that. We all got a “I’m stuck in Europe” email from his account. Google wouldn’t help him get his account back, even though the proof was clear cut, so he had to abandon it and tell everyone to ignore future emails from that account. Pretty shitty of Google if you ask me. It may have also been hacked by a bot or by guessing using your person info as a guide. Personally I only trust my own accounts. It’s so cheap these days to register a domain and host it that there’s no reason not to get a decent email that won’t be subject to attack because these folks only go after the big popular email providers. Go register your name as a domain at godaddy.com for $9.95 then get their $2.29 a month email plan or, better yet, host it at Bluehost.com for $6.95 a month and get unlimited domain hosting, emails and single click install of the best open source software like WordPress, Joomla and dozens more. They’ll walk you through the whole process.
They have also hacked into my computer today and wiped out all my friends e-mail addresses in that process. Many friends and familymembers were shocked by their message about my wife and I having a car crash in Wales.
What action can be taken to stop these crooks continuing doing this ??? Police , Interpol etc. ???
I really want to prevent this happening to others !
Many thanks and regards,
Gerard Lemmens
They hacked my att account (associated with yahoo) did the usual thing, and my incomings stopped until I changed my password. My online (webmail contact list) got wiped clean, probably by att.net. Funny, the reply to was to yahoo, where I also have an account. Didn’t touch gmail other that a strange password reset request came in. I think it did something with my wordpress account also.
Don’t worry Steve.. I am running to the bank as we speak. You should get your pile of money any day now… Just hang in there man and what ever you do don’t leave the counrty until you hear from me again.. OK? Perhaps proceed to the nearest police station and I will forward the money to them to give to you.
I will wait for you to confirm that you are at the police station before going any further so just let me know when you are there.
Hello??? Steve you still with me?
Hello friend,
I is a doctor of Law in Nigeria, and I knows that this is very comon occurrennce in Eurpoe countrys. I suggest you take very seriosly these emails, and dont make fun of them. Plenty familys have this problem. You should all send monies most swiftly to all the partys conserned, in case this is a real thing.
Why must you all make fun of the poor peoples who are mugged? Nigerians do not mug. Who knows – you might be next!
If anyone is interested in receiving a 75% cut of 25M US dollars from an estate without a current owner (do not worry, you dont need to do any thing other than provide bank info for deposits of monies), please let me know.
Sincerely,
Ongawulamapelepitamotu Darimapagaladaratagahavabanatu. (PHD, BBQ)
Hah. You made my Sunday morning. A PHD and a BBQ. Most impressive!
I was hit with this on 3 November and it killed my email account (google mail) and Facebook account … not sure if it got in via FB or Gmail. but it nailled it just the same. Does anyone know if there is anything else malicious that it may do to accounts? Word to the wise … change your passwords frequently and keep them as complex as possible.
I decided i will assist these spammers and provide them with a more realistic letter which will in turn assist them to coin much more from the retards in the world that falls for this shit. Here goes:
I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,my friends and I came down here to South Africa.
I was mugged as i climbed off the plane and again as i went to collect my luggage. On the way to the police station the police mugged me and then a taxi drove into us. We have fu*kol left. Not even passports. And they stole our shoes and our feet hurt. We need your help send us some guns and drugs. We dotn need money we just want to go steal our Sh*t back. Thanks
Perfect!
I recently received this and am ashamed to say I did fall for it and didn’t clue into anything until they asked for more money. I had never heard of the email and the details fit for the friend they referenced. In a nutshell they took me for over 2 grand and was asking for another 2 grand. Is there anyone I can report this to or am I just excepting the fact I got got…….and don’t get me wrong I deserve it.
I’ve received these messages from people at yahoo, hotmail and aol.
I’ve wondered what type of passwords folks are using. I’m also wondering if this is happening to people using web mail or client mail (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) and what their password look like. For some of my stuff passwords look like L60MmuaN,
3JM1kKdo, 6LFa2bBe and a password manager is used. There is no way I could remember this stuff. Since I use a client, no addresses are stored on the hosting company server.
When a similar message arrived I contacted the “sender” a friend, and he said his address book had been deleted.
It would be helpful if the hosting companies did provide some backup services.
I just got this exact email from an address similar to my cousin’s. However, characters in the address were changed and transposed. At first, only the name was showing, so I believed the email, and replied back. I got another message giving a Western Union wire transfer address, but this time I saw the email address and realized it was fake. My brother also got the email, so it looks like the hackers could get into the AOL account and find the contact addresses on someone’s account.
Virus is still alive – be careful – the virus is probably propagating via PC, probably a remote control virus.
XXX XXX is available 5:44 am
XXX XXX 5:44 am
hI
how you doing?
XXX XXX is available 7:22 am
YYY YYY7:51 am
Hi XXX! It’s been a while – sorry I missed this – I usually leave my computers running
good morning!
I’m good
working at Clear Channel, because of Rab…
XXX XXX 7:51 am
am not good
YYY YYY7:51 am
oh
what is going on for you?
XXX XXX 7:52 am
We are currently stuck in London uk,went there on a short vacation and was mugged at a gun point last night
YYY YYY7:53 am
oh…that’s not good – can i do anything for you
did you get hurt
XXX XXX 7:53 am
I was hurt on my head,writing you in tears now as we speak,All cash and credit card was stolen off including cell phone,it was a brutal experience and horrendous
Thank God we still have our lives and passport with us……I need your help??
YYY YYY7:53 am
hmmm…
how do i know this is XXX
XXX XXX 7:55 am
this is me
YYY YYY7:55 am
ok qq – where did we work together
what company
who is this?
i’m calling XXX now
nice virus
YYY YYY7:57 am
the real XXX is aware now
hope the police get you
track your ip
This user is offline 7:59 am
This user cannot receive IMs at this time.
I got this today!!! Same thing! I replied and they gave me an address… and ACTUAL information about the lady that was spammed…. CREEPY…
On October 21, 2011, someone in the world hacked into our email account and hijacked it for several hours. They changed the password and the question/answer so that we could not access our account. They also forwarded all of our emails to a counterfeit email address that was very similar to ours. Then they sent the following email to our 162 contacts with the reply set to direct any possible response to their fake email.
I’m writing this with tears in my eye, my family and I came down here to Cardiff,wales united kingdom for a short vacation and got mugged at the park of the hotel we stayed, all our cash, credit card and Cell Phone were stolen off us at GUN POINT but luckily for us we still have our passports with us but don’t have enough money to sort the bills so we can get out of here. We’ve been to the embassy and the police here but they’re not helping issues at all and our round flight leaves soon but we’re having problems settling the hotel bills, and the hotel manager won’t let us leave until we settle the bills, I’m freaked out at the moment and wondering if you could help us with a quick loan, I promise to refund it once we get home. Please write me so i can send you the info on how you can get the money to us, so as to save us from the embarrassment of not being able to cover the bills.
By using a temporary email address, we replied to this request. Here is their response:
Glad you replied back, I have nothing left on me right now and we are lucky to have our lives and passports with us,it would have been worst if they had made away with our passports. I don’t really have much access to the internet for days that’s why you have to hear from me earlier.
Well all we need now is just 1,650 Pounds but anything you could assist with now will be helpful, you can have it wired to my name via Western Union or post office… I’ll have to show my passport as ID to pick it up here and I promise to pay you back as soon as we get back home. Here’s my info below
put down Dr. Simon W. Spiller.
Location:59 Cathedral Road Cardiff South Glamorgan CF11 9HE UK
As soon as it has been done, kindly get back to me with the western union scan receipt. Let me know if you are heading to the WU outlet now???
Please note the address and the contact name that they gave to us: Dr. Simon W. Spiller at 59 Cathedral Road Cardiff South Glamorgan CF11 9HE UK