Crime Online

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They don’t actually call it a lottery in this one, but it’s written like the Yahoo & MSN scam e-mails which have been reported often here. Instead of MSN they name Windows Live as the cooperation partner. Looks as though they are modernizing.

The Longsight district of Manchester is mostly a urban area and if you look at the Stockport Road on Google Maps you will see there are hardly any office or commercial buildings of any kind.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: YAHOO AWARD GRANTS 2008 <mrsgracesanders100@hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 5:28 PM
Subject: YOU ARE A WINNER OF YAHOO AWARD GRANTS JULY 2008
To:

Yahoo & Window Live Awards Centre
124 Stockport Road, Longsight, Manchester M60 2DB -
United Kingdom
Tel:+447031925532.

This is to inform you that you have won a prize money of Three million,Two Hundred Thousand Great Britain Pounds (GBP 3,200,000.00) for the month of July, 2008 Prize promotion which is organized by YAHOO A WARDS & WINDOWS LIVE.

YAHOO collects all the email addresses of the people that are active online, among the millions that subscribed to Yahoo and Hotmail and few from other e-mail providers. Six people are selected monthly to benefit from this promotion and you are one of the Selected Winners which your e-mail address won the Jackpot Prize while other five winners won One Million Great Britain Pounds(GBP 1,000,000.00) each.

PAYMENT OF PRIZE / CLAIMS

Winners shall be paid in accordance with their Settlement Centers. Yahoo Prize Award must be claimed not later than 10 days from date of Draw Notification. Any prize not claimed within this period will be forfeited and returned to its source as unclaimed.

Stated below are your identification numbers:

BATCH NUMBER: MFI/06/APA-43658
REFERENCE NUMBER: 2007234522
PIN: 1207

You are requested to contact our Assistant co-ordinator in Manchester and send your winning identification numbers to him:

Co-ordinator’s Name: Rev Fr. Niculai Anton
E-Mail:awardcenter010@gmail.com
Tel:+447031925532

You are advised to send the following information to our co-ordinator to facilitate the release of of your fund to you.

1. Full name……………………………………….
2. Country………………………………………….
3. Contact Address…………………………..
4. Telephone Number……………………….
5. fax Number……………………………………
5. Marital Status……………………………….
6. Occupation……………………………………
7. Sex…………………………………………………
8. Date of Birth/Age ………………………….
9. Identity card(carte identite)………….

Congratulations!! once again.

Yours in service,

Mrs. Grace Sanders(Awards coordinator)

——————————-
WARNING!

You must keep strict confidentiality of your Prize Award claims to yourself until your money is successfully handed over to you to avoid disqualification that may arise from double claims.

Yahoo Awards Team shall not be held liable for any loss of funds arising from the above mentioned.

This one chose a comic name for himself.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: oyo skido
Date: Sep 5, 2008 12:14 PM
Subject: Have you contacted the bank
To:

Dear friend,

Have you contacted the bank like i told you to do ?.If you have not
contacted them yet just do it right away.Ask them to transfer you fund
the total sum of $1.6 million u s dollars,which I kept for your
compensation. Contact the bank on this information below.

MRS. ARUM FAYE DEPT A/C OF BANK OF BENIN
ADDRESS:ZONE DE AMBASSADOR COT BP 1034 STANDARD
Email: bceao_int_1@hotmail.fr
Tell : 00 229 97 35 54 81
Tell/Fax: 00 229 93 00 09 31

Sincerely,
Barrister Skido oyoAinsworth (SAB)

Very considerate this one. They even offer delivery options.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Dave Coleman
Date: Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 5:15 PM
Subject: Microsoft Award Team
To: undisclosed-recipients

Microsoft Award Team
Microsoft London (Cardinal Place)
100 Victoria Street
London
SW1E 5JL

It’s with great pleasure to announce to you, that you just won the sum
of 500,000.00 GBP (five hundred thousand pounds sterling). In the MSN
AWARD TEAM PROMO. The Microsoft word is offering a free donation to
hotmail and msn subscriber,including other web-based email ID and
domains. So if you receive this letter of notification you are also a
winner and you are required to participate.

Our online ballot box machine selected your email ID automatically,
with the following information affiliated to your email ID.

Your Identification numbers are given below.
Reference #: MSN/511-007-12
Batch #: MW/JO/612NG

You are advice to contact the MSN AWARD TEAM claims agent with
immediate effect to facilitate the release of your winning prize.

When contacting your claims agent, you are to furnish him with your
reference and batch number along with the required information below:

Name Of Winner: __________________
Sex ________________________
Nationality: ________________
Age: _________
Occupation: _____________
Marital Status: ____________
Tel No: _____________ Fax No: _______
Postal Address:
Country: _____________________
Winning E-mail Address:_____________

See below for the two option, you are required to choose from the two
option the best means of sending your winning to you.

1. The Bank Option.

This option is the fastest means of getting your winning money
transfer to you and it’s safe too, if you chooses this option. You
will be ask to contact the bank were your money will be deposited,
then you can deal with them directly about your money.

2. The courier Delivery Option.

This option is safe but a little delay in delivery, if you chooses
this option. You will also be ask to contact the courier company were
your winning package will be register, and you will be given an order
number which you can contact them with.

Please note: which ever choice you pick, any expenses that may come up
will be your responsibility.

Claims agent contact details:

Mr. Alan Bradford (MSW officer)

Email: claimmanofficer101@googlemail.com

Please contact him as soon as you receive this notification email,
Once again congratulations.

Best regards,
Mr. Eddy lewis.
Executive Secretary/Co-ordinator.

Here we go with a typical lost or suspended account. Doing a quick research I was not able to find an prominent “Eward Merril” which would fit the deceased account story which is being used here.

This is unusual in that the crooks like to quote press releases which give their stories some creedance.

The person calling himself William Zuma says he is from South Africa. Now that could be true, but it is hard to prove. To tell the truth, it’s not all that important, because to run the Advanced Fee scam the crooks don’t actually have to be in the country they claim to come from.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: William X. Zuma &lt;wxz2u2000@hotmail.com&gt;
Date: Fri, May 9, 2008 at 1:44 PM
Subject: William
To: wxz2u2000@hotmail.com

From: William X. Zuma
Phone:+27 79 758 5599
Email:zumawills@yahoo.com

Dear Sir/Madam

I will like to solicit your help in a business proposition, which is by nature very confidential and a top secret. I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one worried and apprehensive but I am assuring you not to worry, as all will be well at the end of this endeavor.

I am William Xhozi Zuma, Client Service Manager of one of the prime banks in Johannesburg South Africa, my partners and I have decided to seek your help in the transfer of some amount of money requiring maximum confidence from my bank. A foreigner, Late Dr. Edward Merrill, who was an oil merchant and contractor was our customer here at our bank and had a balance of US$106 million which the bank now expects his next of kin to claim as the beneficiary .

So far, valuable efforts has been made to get to his people but to no avail, as he had no known relatives more because he left his next of kin column in his account opening forms blank and he has no known relatives . Due to this development our management and the board of directors are making arrangements for the funds to be declared unclaimed, returned to South Africa being the point of origin and subsequently paid into the Reserve Bank purse. Usually, funds of this nature end up in the greedy pockets of some politicians due to our corrupt society.

To avert this negative development my colleagues and I have decided to look for a reputable person to act as the next of kin to late Dr. Merrill, so that the funds could be processed and released into his account, which is where you come in. Whereby you cannot come here in person for this transaction, we shall make arrangement with a qualified and reliable attorney that will represent you in liaising with my bank for inconveniency of you coming to my country.

All legal documents to aid your claim for this fund and to prove your relationship with the deceased will be provided by us. Your help will be appreciated with 20% of the total sum. Please accept my apologies, keep my confidence and disregard this letter if you do not appreciate this proposition I have offered you. Thank you very much for your time.

I wait anxiously for your response via secure email id: zumawills@yahoo.com.

Yours truly,

William Zum

Technorati-Tags: Dr. Edward Merrill, William Xhozi Zuma, Advance Fee Fraud

Occasionally I get e-mails, which at first look, could be real. This one looks very real. That is until I took a closer look at the header.

Received: from nat75.mia.three.co.uk (nat75.mia.three.co.uk
[217.171.129.75]) by webmail.atanor.com.ar (Horde MIME library) with HTTP;
Sat, 03 May 2008 11:44:13 -0300
Message-ID: <20080503114413.arb0icfv280s8k0g@webmail.atanor.com.ar>
Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 11:44:13 -0300
From: “grodriguez@atanor.com.ar”
Reply-to: jmooreuk@hotmail.co.uk
To: dehus@dri-eaz.com
Subject: Investment Project

Funny, that the return address does not have anything to do with Atacor.

And that’s the point. This message is written and set up to give the impression you are actually dealing with some one from Atacor.

Only if you look closer do you see that it is nothing more than a scam message.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: grodriguez@atanor.com.ar
Date: Sat, May 3, 2008 at 4:44 PM
Subject: Investment Project
To: dehus@dri-eaz.com

We are investors advisors based here in the Europe we are seeking for a fund managers for our clients, therefore, we are looking for a matured and experience candidate who is capable to manage and invest my client fund for a period of 10 years, profit and other modalities will be discussed 1 on 1 with the investor?s advisor.

If you are not interested PLEASE DO IGNORE THIS e-MAIL and if you are willing and capable do get in touch for more details below email ads.
jmooreuk@hotmail.co.uk

Regards,

J.Moore.

PS: If you are the secretary please direct this letter to the President or CEO of your company.

And so a further inheritance is passed my way. Just too bad that it’s not true.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Dr.Jim Peter &lt;jimpeter@hotmail.com&gt;
Date: Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 12:19 AM
Subject: Swift message?
To:

Mr. Jim Peter
The Legal Representative
No: 12, Satellite Town Lagos Nigeria

Hello ,

Get back to me immediately for necessary steps concerning your inheritance , Sequel to your none - reply of my earlier email to you dated 02/03/06. On behalf of the Trustees and Executors to the Will of your deceased relation in 2002, I wish to notify you that your name appeared in the codicil and last statement of the deceased and you entitled to his fund US$7,000,000.00 deposited with a Bank here and the bank here has made me know that the US$7,000,000.00 will be release to you through their payment oficer with Citi bank of United States of America. You are advised to reconfirm to me your details as required below to enable the release of your funds worth US$7,000,000.00 to you through our payment outlet in the U.S.A :- i also want to notify you that as soon as the bank release the fund to your account i will be comeing to your contact address that you will send to me now so that i will teke my own because I will have 45% and you 45% the other 10% will be for any payment that we make before the fund release to your account we will teke it out from the 10%

(1). Your full names :
(2). contact address :
(3). Phone :
(4). Cell phone :
(5). Age :
(6). Occupation :
(7).I D

As soon as the above are provided the paying bank will contact you for wire transfer release.
Regards,
Barrister Jim Peter

Technorati Tags: 419 Scam, Inheritance Fraud