Diplomatic appointment scam

[Unidyne]

Okay, here's something I haven't seen before.

I get an e-mail entitled "From His Excellency John Dramani Mahama the new appng President of republic of Ghana" (sic) and the message rambles a bit, stating;

Dear Beneficiary

I am His Excellency John Dramani Mahama the new appointed president of the Republic of Ghana I here by pass this information to you that your are being appointed by the Member of the Parliament of Ghana and the United Nation,African Union, Eco was has being appointed you as the only God fearing person who can be appointed as the new Ambassador to African refugees.The meeting was held in the castle
House in OSU (president Office). Your name has been nominated as the next Ambassador for the African Refugees.

It later states that if I send them $199 by Western Union for "Appointment to Register you as the NEXT AMBASSADOR to African Refugee from the United Nation Head Office", I'll receive "a monthly Salary of $75,000 Usd monthly with weekly payment of $7,500 Usd with Diplomatic Pass Port and United Nation Private Jet".

The contact telephone number listed is +233269142905, if anyone wants to research.

My main complaint is that there will be people out there who will fall for this.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

[Burnaby49]

Way back I read a very interesting article on the Nigerian scammers which theorized that all of these grammar and spelling mistakes are deliberate. They don't want to waste time on anyone with any education or sense so they cull them out by deliberately writing come-ons that only an idiot would believe. Makes sense since it would be no effort at all to have somebody literate in English proofread their e-mails for flaws.

[Funkalicious]

Here's a link to an article by a researcher at Microsoft explaining the math behind a similar question: why, if everyone knows about Nigerian 419 scams, do scammers identify themselves as Nigerian?

http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/1677 ... igeria.pdf

[eric]

Here's a link to an article by a researcher at Microsoft explaining the math behind a similar question: why, if everyone knows about Nigerian 419 scams, do scammers identify themselves as Nigerian?

http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/1677 ... igeria.pdf

Actually, one of the conclusions explored in that article, that increasing the effort that scammers must put into finding victims, is a basis for security measures put in place by sites like kijiji. Since both the scammer's and potential victim's email address are hidden, all interaction must take place on a single user to single user basis. The amount of effort this entails hinders the efforts of a scammer to identify and harvest potential victims. Biggest security hint I can offer - if a person on kijiji is persistently asking for your real email or phone number, it's probably a scam.