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Fakes & Fraudsheads up on scam for club officials

19th Mar 2017 00:06 UTCDon Windeler

Folks:


I'm president of a local mineral club. Earlier this week my treasurer received the e-mail below, supposedly from my e-mail:


"I trust this e-mail finds you well, I need you to set up a bank transfer payment. do you have few minutes to process the transaction today? I will send you the banking details upon request, can you send me the recent financial report/available balance in the account."


E-mail addresses involved were spoofed, but my treasurer and I are close enough that he checked in with me directly through verifiable channels and confirmed that it was not a message I had sent him.



My primary reasons for posting this is to highlight a couple of points for other mineral club officials.


(1) Even groups as (relatively) small as mineral clubs are not immune to spearfishing attacks. Whoever tried this looked up our club officials and tried to create a realistic message to get our club to dump money to a third party.


(2) If it's not already ingrained in the officials' collective cerebellum, don't jump to any such requests unless verified through direct channels. In our case, my treasurer had red flags from both the request for a bank transfer (always a scam alert!) and the fact I didn't mention personal details of a trip he knew I was taking.



In short: it doesn't matter how big or small you are... somebody out there would love to relieve you of your money, so always verify.


Cheers,

D.

19th Mar 2017 03:01 UTCDoug Daniels

Such people are lower than the algae that build stromatolites.

19th Mar 2017 04:08 UTCMatt Neuzil Expert

Or a hot steaming pile of fresh "coprolite"

19th Mar 2017 13:00 UTCHarold Moritz 🌟 Expert

They probably got the email addresses from the EFMLS or AFMS club directory web sites. I occasionally get junk too that makes it through the filter but never that kind. It's interesting how during the recession low of 2009-10 my filtered spam was down to less than 20/day (ws hoping it would stay there), now it is up over 300/day. I guess that's a good economic indicator for ya!

Agree with Doug's and Matt's characterization, but at least stromatolites gave us oxygen...
 
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