Scams like these

Yesterday after the big storm, my husband was out in the garden clearing away some debris. An older gentleman approached my husband and told him that he had an arrangement with the previous owner to take lemons from our tree whenever he wanted. My husband asked him how long ago had he made the arrangement. The gentleman replied that it was about three years ago. My husband told the gentleman that he was surprised about the arrangement as we had moved in in 1986 and he had never seen this gentleman before.
Time to bring out the rocking chair and shotgun.
 
LOOK OUT for this myGov Scam email received today!!!
It looks real, but of-course the ATO would never contact you this way nor ask for verification before paying a refund. And whoever heard of the tax year ending 5-2020.
1591493956040.png
 
Last edited:
Nominally from "qantas support"
Your Personal Coronavirus Relief Bonus is
1 Free Flight to New Zealand

Looking to help us get pleasure from our centenary year?
Over the upcoming 100 hours, we are releasing

100 Golden Tickets at $205 from London Heathrow to Sydney, Economy return. Daily we will release 20 of these special tickets from ?12:00 PM?. We've only acquired 100 available so be sure you be quick and check the offer day-to-day.
...

Pity the "Claim now" link goes off to somewhere in "bit.ly"

Is someone else wandering?
Fred
 
This one just sent to me from my partner. From UK I’m presuming. Maybe it’s here as it quotes dollars but then scammers aren’t the smartest...

616EFA0E-4264-4635-A333-CC9824EBA332.jpeg
 
From: Ms. Carman L. Lapointe.
UNITED NATIONS OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL OVERSIGHT SERVICES
Internal Audit,Monitoring,Consulting And Investigations Division.


It is my distinct pleasure to write you again and as you are well aware many foreigners have invested thousands of United States Dollars into Nigeria transactions in Hopeless Dreams to have none of them become a reality.


Right now, as directed by our secretary general Antonio Guterres, We have agreed with the Nigeria Government that One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only would be paid to you through the Western Union Money Transfer Via special arrangement as first installment.


This is to enable you have enough funds to pay for the Tax Clearance and bank charges before you will receive the balance of your funds. Please take note that you will pay US$150 only, being Notarization fee and this is the only financial obligation that you will undertake to receive the One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only through the Western Union Money Transfer.


Lastly,i will like you to reconfirm your information to me such as your full name, address and telephone number so that I will proceed with your Western Union Money Transfer within the next 24 hrs and the transaction information will be released to you.


I await your response for further proceedings.


Sincerely yours,


Carman L. Lapointe
{Under-Secretary-General}
United Nations
 
From: Ms. Carman L. Lapointe.
UNITED NATIONS OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL OVERSIGHT SERVICES
Internal Audit,Monitoring,Consulting And Investigations Division.


It is my distinct pleasure to write you again and as you are well aware many foreigners have invested thousands of United States Dollars into Nigeria transactions in Hopeless Dreams to have none of them become a reality.


Right now, as directed by our secretary general Antonio Guterres, We have agreed with the Nigeria Government that One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only would be paid to you through the Western Union Money Transfer Via special arrangement as first installment.


This is to enable you have enough funds to pay for the Tax Clearance and bank charges before you will receive the balance of your funds. Please take note that you will pay US$150 only, being Notarization fee and this is the only financial obligation that you will undertake to receive the One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only through the Western Union Money Transfer.


Lastly,i will like you to reconfirm your information to me such as your full name, address and telephone number so that I will proceed with your Western Union Money Transfer within the next 24 hrs and the transaction information will be released to you.


I await your response for further proceedings.


Sincerely yours,


Carman L. Lapointe
{Under-Secretary-General}
United Nations
Once they have your name, address and phone number what do they do with it?
 
LOOK OUT for this myGov Scam email received today!!!
It looks real, but of-course the ATO would never contact you this way nor ask for verification before paying a refund. And whoever heard of the tax year ending 5-2020.
View attachment 219835
Wonder what exam that was Prostate or Breast?
 
Once they have your name, address and phone number what do they do with it?
They do an examination and see if you too are available for a generous refund.
 
Mobile phone scam recently. Paraphrased.
This is to confirm that you have made an Ebay purchase of 399 dollars. If you have not, please press 1.
This is where I hung up, checked my eBay and credit card accounts online and found nothing new.

Boredom is caused by the lack of wandering
Fred
 
Mobile phone scam recently. Paraphrased.
This is to confirm that you have made an Ebay purchase of 399 dollars. If you have not, please press 1.
This is where I hung up, checked my eBay and credit card accounts online and found nothing new.

Boredom is caused by the lack of wandering
Fred
same one this morning.
just for sake of it, I didn't press 1, but just held on wondering whether I might get to speak to someone.
The first voice recording sounded like a mild US accent, and then after about 30 seconds of silence the message was repeated but this time with a female Australian voice.
Waited another 30 seconds, but nothing.

Yesterday, had the well known "your phone and internet will be disconnected tomorrow as NBN deadline has arrived etc, press 1 to speak to a technician" scam.
A professional Australian female voice I am pretty sure I have heard on legit services.
I trust she was scammed into recording it for such a despicable activity.
If not she should be ashamed of herself.
 
This thread seems to have gone a bit cool ... no new scams out there??

Until recently I was getting maybe 3 to 5 scam emails a week that gmail let through.
In the last week I have over 160, and every one is asking for money to support some Republican cause, whether a congress candidate down to a local mayor, all railing against the radical left Democrats and the injustices of the Black Lives matter anarchists, or the emergency of the police being defunded. They desperately want me to donate to "save the USA"
Many / most seem to be from what looks like a legit email marketing company Constant contact (google if interested), but I am not game to click the unsubscribe option. Anyway, the right wing loonies do provide some entertainment about how dire their predicament is with the elections less than 100 days away.

What I am wondering is why this has started suddenly in the last week. Maybe my email address was compromised somewhere ??

Anyone else getting this avalanche of (pseudo) right wing emails?

EDIT - A PS...

the links for the email marketing company look genuine, so they are also a victim here.
every link to click for donating is in form
(http etc) r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp plus a long string of characters
 
Last edited:
This thread seems to have gone a bit cool ... no new scams out there??

Until recently I was getting maybe 3 to 5 scam emails a week that gmail let through.
In the last week I have over 160, and every one is asking for money to support some Republican cause, whether a congress candidate down to a local mayor, all railing against the radical left Democrats and the injustices of the Black Lives matter anarchists, or the emergency of the police being defunded. They desperately want me to donate to "save the USA"
Many / most seem to be from what looks like a legit email marketing company Constant contact (google if interested), but I am not game to click the unsubscribe option. Anyway, the right wing loonies do provide some entertainment about how dire their predicament is with the elections less than 100 days away.

What I am wondering is why this has started suddenly in the last week. Maybe my email address was compromised somewhere ??

Anyone else getting this avalanche of (pseudo) right wing emails?
I have gone the other way - hardly a spam worth reporting. This one is the latest, although with such a charming opening I am not sure it qualifies:
Hey-hey! I do not doubt that someone as intelligent-looking as yourself would be popular with the chicks… When I was simply mindlessly browsing my Instagram feed, your pictures popped up and I was hooked right off the bat. That is the reason why I am happy to show my pix here Click Here Hopefully you are gonna share risque shots in retaliation?Hugs&Kisses
 
My scam emails had disappeared but 2 so far this week by ladies who want me to help them with their lottery win/divorce settlement.But I didn't think I should send them my bank details.
 
Now getting more scams from US, France & Germany.

One warning that most here already know but....

There are a few variations but it uses a Cyrillac text instead of English BUT unless you've installed the special Microsoft/Apple update for that language base - it appears as English lettering. So Microsoft.com is really MicroZoXt.com (say).

The trick of holding your cursor over the link shows you a seemingly legitimate https//Microsoft.com

Most of the European & US scam emails these days use this approach. Unfortunately I deleted today's crop before open this blog today. I'll try & post a screenshot to give an idea of what they really look like.

You're gonna need some help recognizing this phishing scam
mashable.com › phishing-homograph-attack-identical-letters



Apr 20, 2017 - How do you spot a phishing scam when the URL looks perfectly legit? ... URL with similar or identical letters from non-English alphabets such as Cyrillic. ... letter of the real URL is replaced with a letter from a different alphabet.
Fake URLs with Cyrillic letters | Computeractive Magazine
getcomputeractive.co.uk › protect-your-tech › fake-urls-with-cyrillic-l...



Fake URLs with Cyrillic letters. Scammers have created a fake URL for the messaging service WhatsApp using letters from the Cyrillic alphabet that look similar to letters in the Latin alphabet (used in English). You can see in the screenshot that the 'w' and 't' of www.whatsapp.com have been replaced.


Good to see we've got semi-home grown scammers...

Perth millionaire Zhenya Tsvetnenko arrested over US text ...
www.perthnow.com.au › news › perth-millionaire-zhenya-tsvetnenko...


Jan 26, 2019 - Now the Russian-born Perth internet millionaire, whose real name is ... alleged involvement in a multimillion-dollar text-messaging scam, which ..

Now did you trustingly click on the links?

I hope not. You never know when someone's machine may have got hacked.

I even made a deliberate grammatical error just to raise a little suspicion, did you notice it or did you subconsciously read it by substituting 'opening'? - "Unfortunately I deleted today's crop before open this blog today."

With some of the more sophisticated scams/techniques these days that may be the only warning you get.

Much safer to just do a search (say on the name) to try & get a safe link.

As far as I know the link (above) from a search is safe, but......

Wonderful world that technology is helping(?) us to live in.

<< Second error was typo, not deliberate, that I thought I'd leave in >>
 
Read our AFF credit card guides and start earning more points now.

AFF Supporters can remove this and all advertisements

Only the DHL China Mandarin scammy speaker left messages in my case.
Thanks to my newish Android phones I can block calls.
A relo gets a million (so to speak) mobile phone missed calls from Vic, not game to answer, no one we know in Vic.
 

Become an AFF member!

Join Australian Frequent Flyer (AFF) for free and unlock insider tips, exclusive deals, and global meetups with 65,000+ frequent flyers.

AFF members can also access our Frequent Flyer Training courses, and upgrade to Fast-track your way to expert traveller status and unlock even more exclusive discounts!

AFF forum abbreviations

Wondering about Y, J or any of the other abbreviations used on our forum?

Check out our guide to common AFF acronyms & abbreviations.
Back
Top