A new scam

One has become accustomed to generous-spirited West Africans offering one amounts of money in the tens of millions in return for a little help laundering it, and one knows what to do with their e-mails. Yesterday I received a more subtle version of the same thing. This came allegedly from an impeccable source, with whom almost no computer user has not had legitimate dealings – viz. Microsoft Himself. They tell me that, in a recent promotion involving internet users, my numbers (I was not, of course, aware that I had any) had come up, and that I was due a payment of £150,000 which I only had to claim.

To do this I have to write to a man with a Hong Kong e-mail address but a UK phone number, under the reassuring moniker of Barry Coleman-Williams, giving him my name, address, phone number, nationality and gender, but nothing further (at least at the moment). The subtlety of this scam lies not just in the seeming straight dealing of Barry and his friends; it lies also in the sum held out. We all know, at least in the economic regions I inhabit, that sums like ten or twenty million simply don’t exist; but a hundred and fifty K is the sort of sum one could just do with. So well done chaps, nice try, but I don’t think so.

(P.S. I googled friend Barry, and discovered that a chap called Ameer Saeed Al-Ghani received the same e-mail, and that Ameer seems to have drawn the same lottery numbers as I have.)