419 scam: Want a share of some millions “found” in Baghdad during the war?

Oh my. My blog is turning into some myth-busting site. Hehe.

I received an email this afternoon, forwarded to me by a colleague. Alarm bells went ringing as soon as I saw the header. An email from someone within the US Army? Can’t be.

And then I read the email. My mind was pretty much made up by then that this was some kind of scam.

Here’s the email that was forwarded. Take note of the From: field.

From: Sgt.Al Thompson [mailto:thompson@usarmy.com]
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 10:24 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: Matter Of Interest.

Matter Of Interest.

My name is Sgt.Al Thompson, a member of the U.S. ARMY USARPAC Medical Team, which was deployed to Iraq in the beginning of the Iraq’s war. I will like to share some highly classified information about my personal experience and role which I played in the pursuit of my career serving under the U.S ARMY.

Though, I would like to hold back some certain information for security reasons for now until you have find the time to visit the BBC website stated below to enable you have insight as to what I'm intending to share with you, believing that it would be of your desired interest one-way or the other. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm

Please get back to me after visiting the above website to enable us discuss more. I'm not comfortable sending this message to you without knowing fully well if you are indeed with me or you may decides to go public.

Please reply me via my personal email:sgt.althompsonus@gmail.com confirming you have visited the site and that you have understood my intentions.
Thanks,
Best Regards,
Sgt.Al Thompson

Let’s just try to ignore the bad grammar, shall we? ;-) It didn’t take much to unravel this scam that I wonder if anyone’s been taken in by it.

My “Internet sleuth” quick response below:

Dear All,

Beware! This is a variation on the (419) Nigerian email scams on the internet. The way it works is, the scammers offer a share in huge sums of money, but you need to pay them some advance fees first (for “processing”, etc.).

Please see:
Phishbucket article

Break The Chain forum post

This one capitalizes on a real event, which was reported by the BBC (hence the legitimate link in the email). The gist: A stash of money was found in some containers in Baghdad, but there are some questions as to where the money came from and even whether all the money found has been accounted for.

Don’t fall for this scam!

I don’t usually use the Importance: High flag in email, but I did with my response above. Just wanted to make sure no one had already tried contacting the scammers. They can be quite persuasive apparently.

On another note, these scammers aren’t very imaginative when it comes to the fake names, eh?