Hey, just send me $3,000!

[Famspear]

Yesterday, completely out of the blue, I received this email at work. It purports to be from a CPA who happens to have been the prior accountant for a company in a bankruptcy case I've worked on in the past. I don't even know the guy.

Here is the complete text of the message:

Hope you get this on time,sorry I didn't inform you about my trip in Spain for a program, I'm presently in Madrid and am having some difficulties here because i misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money and other valuable things were kept.I want you to assist me with a loan of 2,300EUR=$3,000USD to sort-out my hotel bills and to get myself back home.

I have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively,I will appreciate whatever you can afford to assist me with,I'll Refund the money back to you as soon as i return, let me know if you can be of any help. I don't have a phone where i can be reached. Please let me know immediately.

Thanks
[name redacted]

That's the entire text. It isn't even addressed to me personally. It's written to appear as though this guy actually knows me and actually thinks I might just send him $3,000.

I suspect that this guy's email account has been hacked by a scammer, that the email was sent to everyone in his "address book" or whatever, and that he himself is not even aware of it. I don't remember if I've ever even talked with this guy, and I don't have a phone number for him readily available.

[Cathulhu]

My cousin's facebook account got hacked in a similar fashion--suddenly she's messaging that she's stuck in London and needs money to get home because everything stolen. While that particular cousin travels a great deal and could conceivably yell for help to me, I knew instantly it wasn't her. The poor English and lousy punctuation are only a clue, but it simply didn't sound like her. We've been family long enough that outsiders require a translator. So I called her and told her that her account was hacked, and she and I reported it to fb. Yup, everyone on her contact list got that plea.

[Number Six]

I got a similar message early last year from someone who has big creds in his industry. Initially I was shocked that he would try to scam me, then realized it was probably due to yahoo's lax monitoring policies compared to some others.

Once I got on another numismatic industry site, I received emails from African mining companies looking for a joint venture, or nitwits asking if I accept credit cards for coin purchases. I refer them to those more seasoned to deal with possibly fraudulent activity.

[notorial dissent]

Unfortunately now a fairly common 419 variant, the usual dead giveaway is the long list of other people they've sent it to, or that it was sent out as a blind copy. I got one of these a while back that the copy to ran almost two pages.

[Mr. Mephistopheles]

I got one of these allegedly from my cousin sometime in the last year, except it was England instead of Spain. Again, the writing wasn't quite right and the story was someone jumped him and stole his wallet. There was another clue, he's built like an NFL tight end. So, I sent him a text and asked him if his e-mail got hacked, to which I received a reply in the affirmative.