Many years ago, I received an email purporting to be from an old friend in Canberra who, according to that email, had been stranded in London with no passport and no money and was in urgent need of my financial help.
It just so happened that I knew he had never left the country which was confirmed by a quick phone call to Canberra. In other words, I am no stranger to scams, but the one that came in today is a real cutie.
It pretends to be from an old colleague of mine from my Bougainville days, whom I last saw - what? - some twenty years ago, when I was taking the train to Sydney and stopped over for a day in Thirroul to visit him at his home at Austinmer. And here he was again, emailing me:
"Hi, I apologize for the inconvenience, but could you spare a few minutes to respond to emails? I would have called, but I can't speak on the phone because of severe throat pain from laryngitis. Kindly inform me when you receive this."
Quite chaffed to hear from him again after all this time, I replied:
"Long time no see, John! Yes, go ahead; I'm here!"
Within minutes, I received his reply:
Ooops! She is his friend's daughter which means his friend is her mother, and yet he goes on to say that "she had lost both parents". Something doesn't add up! I've just spoken with John on the phone. He's eighty-eight years of age and no longer as mobile as he used to be, and neither is his mental agility, but eventually the penny dropped and he realised that scammers must have hacked the address book in his email account.
What stopped me from rushing out to buy that gift card is the cold weather, but I must admit, those scammers are getting quite clever. They are obviously not Australian or they couldn't have spelt 'laryngitis'!
