I got a weird ass email

Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
crandc

crandc

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 15, 2008
Messages
23,312
Likes
30,193
Points
113
And I wonder if it's a scam?

It was sent to my personal account. I only use this for friends/personal and never for on line purchases or internet groups (I have hotmail accounts for that) so it stays pretty spam free.

This morning I got what purported to be an urgent email from an attorney who represented me in a past case and advised me on another. (She did a good job, and BTW her father conducted Maurice Lucas' wedding ceremony). The email says she is in England for a conference and left the bag with her money and passport in a cab, now she has no money for hotel bill and has not eaten and the hotel management is after her ass and could I reply and let her know if I can Western Union a loan.

It seems weird. Yes, accidents happen. But wouldn't a visitor contact the Embassy about the lost passport? And she has family and colleagues, seems in an emergency she'd contact them first, not a former client whom she has not seen for 3 years.

So instead of hitting reply I sent a fresh email to her known account asking if it was real. I'd be willing to help her out if she was really in a pickle. I hope she gets my message (whether her email was real or fake).

Thoughts?
 
crandc said:
And I wonder if it's a scam?

It was sent to my personal account. I only use this for friends/personal and never for on line purchases or internet groups (I have hotmail accounts for that) so it stays pretty spam free.

This morning I got what purported to be an urgent email from an attorney who represented me in a past case and advised me on another. (She did a good job, and BTW her father conducted Maurice Lucas' wedding ceremony). The email says she is in England for a conference and left the bag with her money and passport in a cab, now she has no money for hotel bill and has not eaten and the hotel management is after her ass and could I reply and let her know if I can Western Union a loan.

It seems weird. Yes, accidents happen. But wouldn't a visitor contact the Embassy about the lost passport? And she has family and colleagues, seems in an emergency she'd contact them first, not a former client whom she has not seen for 3 years.

So instead of hitting reply I sent a fresh email to her known account asking if it was real. I'd be willing to help her out if she was really in a pickle. I hope she gets my message (whether her email was real or fake).

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like a classic scam premise. The only unusual part is that it is ostensibly from somebody you actually know, but this simply suggests that someone managed to get access to your attorney's contact information, and is trying to take advantage of it.

Just my opinion, of course -- if your attorney actually is starving in Heathrow and trying desperately to scrounge money from former clients, I offer her my apologies!
 
My email was returned as undeliverable due to overloaded in box.

BTW, I know she has a BlackBerry but this puports to be sent from a library.

I'll call her office when it opens, just to set my mind at ease. The snail mail addy and phone # on the email I got are her office, so if it is a scam someone really did breach her files.
 
Please check this site out... the company I work for just launched it... videos and information about scams & hacking... some of the people I work with are in the videos.

http://www.stophcommerce.com/
 
crandc said:
I'll call her office when it opens, just to set my mind at ease. The snail mail addy and phone # on the email I got are her office, so if it is a scam someone really did breach her files.
Click to expand...

There is another explanation. It could be that the lawyer business is kind of slow so she decided to become a scam artist.

barfo
 
barfo said:
There is another explanation. It could be that the lawyer business is kind of slow so she decided to become a scam artist.

barfo
Click to expand...

Unlikely, unless she's really changed. I mean, she's a Blazer fan!

But if she's in her office she is obviously not in England, right? Her office is in San Francisco.
 
A women in Oregon lost $400,000 K to a 419 scam like that. People got wise to scams from strangers so the latest trick is to make scams them look like they are coming from someone you know.
 
Paxil said:
A women in Oregon lost $400,000 K to a 419 scam like that. People got wise to scams from strangers so the latest trick is to make scams them look like they are coming from someone you know.
Click to expand...

And the next step will be to make it look like a note you wrote yourself.

1. Buy milk, bread.
2. Send money to Nigeria
3. Pick up drycleaning

barfo
 
I left a phone message. And I just got an email from the real woman saying she is horrifed that someone apparently hacked into her account, thanked everyone for their expressions of concern, and said she is changing emails.

So I was right to think something stank. I mean, intelligent people usually carry travelers' checks, so you might lose a small amount of cash but hardly every shilling.
 
their email addy was hacked. my boss got a similar email about a year ago from a colleague.
 
My daughter had her purse stolen with passport, all money, etc, in London. She called us and then went to the embassy - that is what anyone would do. Calling a relative is basic.

Why would she contact a former client anyway? Actually, now that I think about it, there are ethical rules she would have to follow to borrow money from you (inform you in writing that you should speak to a lawyer first, etc.)
 
crandc said:
I left a phone message. And I just got an email from the real woman saying she is horrifed that someone apparently hacked into her account, thanked everyone for their expressions of concern, and said she is changing emails.

So I was right to think something stank. I mean, intelligent people usually carry travelers' checks, so you might lose a small amount of cash but hardly every shilling.
Click to expand...

I was going to post that this was likely.

If your machine gets hacked, hacker has all the email addresses in your email program's contact list. Typically send out an email to every one of them...
 
Glad i didn't get that email. I would have looked right past the fraud and seen a golden opportunity.

I would do everything my lawyer asks me to do . . . then I would send him an invoice billing him $350.00/hr for my time. :devilwink:
 
Sure, I thought of all kinds of objections. Another that occurred to me was that one can transfer funds electronically from practically anywhere now, so she could have accessed her own bank account.

But what is creepy is that the scammer clearly put thought into this. The email had her work address and phone appended. It was written in her epistolary style. It said she was at a conference on racism and the law, exactly what one would expect a liberal (in the true, not pejorative, sense of the word) lawyer to attend.

And now I have to worry that my confidential legal files are breached - we communicated almost entirely by email in the course of my legal case and a subsequent consultation I had with her.
 
It's a scam.

Get serious.

If she were in a bind she would
A). Call a family member or close friend
B). Make an actual telephone call, not an email.
 
Sinobas said:
It's a scam.

Get serious.

If she were in a bind she would
A). Call a family member or close friend
B). Make an actual telephone call, not an email.
Click to expand...

Um, yeah, that's what I said.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back
Top