Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Bizarre E-Mail

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-30-2004, 02:59 PM:

Today when I got home I checked my e-mail and found this one. So I could pose as this dead guys relative and be worth 6 million dollars overnight...... yea, right!

ATTN Mark Gulbrandsen ,

I am BARRISTER P.T.GEORGE at law. I am the personal
Attorney to MR Robert Gulbrandsen a national of
your country, who used to work with shell development
company in Nigeria and as well a one time secret agent
in transfering of money overseas for the Late head of
state of Nigeria {Late Gen.SANI ABACHA}.Before his
death On the 21st of April 1999 my client,his wife And
their three childrenwere involved in a car accident
along sagbama express road in which alloccupants of
the motor died}. My client{ROBERT} deposited as
family belongings in a CONSIGNMENT {ie jewelries} the
sum of $10m in a Global Security and finance company
here in Nigeria for himself, with the hope of
transferring it to his country as soon as he is on
leave.

Since his death I have made several enquiries to your
embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives
this has also proved unsuccessful.

After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided
to trace his last name over the Internet, to locate
any member of his family hence I contacted you.I have
contacted you to assist in repartrating the money and
property left behind by my client before they get
confisicated or declared unserviceable by the Security
Company where this huge deposits were lodged.

Particularly, the Global Security company where the
deceased had an account valued at about 10million
dollars has issued me a notice to provide the next of
kin or have the account confisicated within the next
ten official working days.since then I have been
unsuccesfull in locating the the relatives for over
2years now I therefore seek your consent to present
you as the next of kin of the deceased since you have
the same last name so that the proceeds of this
account valued at 10million dollars can be paid to you
and then you and me can share the money. 40% to me
and 60% to you I have all necessary legal documents
that can be used to back up any claim we may make. All
I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see
this through. I guarantee that this will be executed
under a legitimate arrangement that will protectyou
from anybreach of the law.

Please get in touch with me through my confidential
email[ barrgeorge0010@yahoo.co.uk ]or you can call me
on my phone number +234-80- 330-48048 .

Best regards,
BARRISTER P.T.GEORGE,

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 04-30-2004, 03:18 PM:

Cool!

Mark, I'll help you recover that money for an advance fee of $100,000 payable to Ian Price of the Large Money Corporation. In exchange for that fee, I will recover any and all funds from Nigeria that you have coming to you.

Your Friend,
Large Ian Price

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 04-30-2004, 03:21 PM:

Every few months I get one or two of those e-mails.

Posted by Floyd Justin Newton (Member # 1316) on 04-30-2004, 08:22 PM:

Yeah... I get one of these about every two months...
BULLSHIT!!

fjn
Local 294 Ret.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 04-30-2004, 09:19 PM:

Would anyone trust Mark with a vast sum of money? Next thing you know there'd be factories churning out new AA-II's, vacuum tubes, and who knows what other madness! [Wink]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-30-2004, 10:09 PM:

I realize most people get a laugh out of those Nigerian "419" e-mail scam notes, just a mass mailing international version of the "pigeon drop" con. But some of this stuff really pisses me off. A Nigerian diplomat was murdered in Europe by a victim of the scam. Lots of lonely, elderly people get taken by the scheme. Some lose their life savings over it. Yeah, call them idiots for being so gullible. But the criminals who took the money are the ones who deserve a sledgehammer blow to the face. Overall they conduct a pretty cruel piece of criminal work and deserve no mercy for it.

Once in awhile, I'll get a different variation on the note eluding my spam filters. I think the notes all come from Nigeria, even though many claim to come from representatives in other nations.

Here's the thing that pisses me off the most on this issue: why in the f**k aren't the Internet Service Providers filtering and deleting this garbage!? How about some Goddamned customer service!? John Dvorak wrote a pretty good article about this issue, and how it may possibly take advantage of those with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). We are getting absolutely nowhere in the war against computer malware as long as the policing is stuck on the end user level. If it were fought at the server level, much of the problem would be eradicated immediately.

This is actually one area where small "mom and pop shop" ISPs can be a LOT BETTER than the big conglomerates like SBC. When I had my dial up account with Sirius Systems, a local ISP based here in Lawton, I rarely ever had any malware at all make it to my e-mail box. The only thing I would ever see was a notice from the ISP that the malware note was deleted.

SBC does not do dick to police its e-mail. Nothing. Nada. Oh, once in awhile they'll throw a gimmie in there saying they tried to clean an infected message. Purely all for show. Total bullshit. All the other big ISPs are exactly the same. Lazy, and probably getting paid off by companies like Symantec, McAfee and others.

When SBC's mail servers are flooded with hundreds of thousands of copies of a 419 scam note, it should be deleted. Same goes for all the viruses that keep showing up. For Christ's sake, I'm still seeing that damned Microsoft Security Patch 155k thing showing up in the junk mail folder. Congratulations, SBC, you saw that the f**king note looked like spam and filtered it as such. Can you throw in some actual virus deletion too?

What excuse do large ISP companies like SBC have to conduct such a lax standard on e-mail security? Dvorak makes the point if you try to send something harmful through snail mail (such as dynamite for example) the U.S. Postal Service is not going to deliver it. Further they may arrest your ass. Why can't the big ISPs do the same? Is there a law preventing them from running massive anti-viral filtering/deletion on their servers? Is the multi-billion dollar anti virus software industry lobbying them to keep the problem going?

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-01-2004, 12:13 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson wrote:
why in the f**k aren't the Internet Service Providers filtering and deleting this garbage!?

Not everyone uses their ISP for their e-mail needs. Lotsa peeps use Hotmail, Yahoo, and other such nonsense. I personally have a free e-mail account with something called "Film-Tech". Let me tell you, I've had this same e-mail address for years, and I get MAX 2 or 3 spam e-mails a day. That's it. It used to be much more, but Daryl has done an awesome job with it! [thumbsup]

[av=v]

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-01-2004, 04:43 AM:

Joe--let me know if you want more spam. I have plenty and would me more than happy to send it all to you.

Bobby--arguably, ISPs shouldn't be filtering mail based upon content. If you want your spam filtered, then that becomes your responsiblity, not theirs.

http://spamassassin.org/

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 05-01-2004, 10:19 AM:

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
my confidential email[ barrgeorge0010@yahoo.co.uk ]

Hahahahaha yeah. Contact me through my confidential Yahoo account. [Big Grin]

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
or you can call me on my phone number +234-80- 330-48048

There has to be someone on this forum who could call this number and have it not be a long distance call.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-01-2004, 11:16 AM:

Perhaps the ISPs don't necessarily have to filter out spam. But I strongly believe they have an obligation to delete virus infected e-mail. There is NO excuse for that.

As competitive as the ISP game has become, I'm frankly surprised more has not been done in this area. It would be a positive marketing tool for an ISP to advertise they run virus scans on all e-mail and auto-delete anything harmful. I'm sure anyone doing this might win more customers.

Naturally, the ISP would need to clarify that end users need to run their own anti-malware tools too to increase safety against brand new viruses that may not be caught at the server level (but you would have to assume the server folks might get their stuff updated as fast or faster than the people at Symantec).

Even the RIAA needs to use the anti-viral thing in its pitch to stop downloading. Hell, I managed to get two of my friend to delete KaZaa and even KaZaa Lite by casually mentioning the P2P place was a big porthole on launching computer malware. It scared the crap out of them. Is that an MP3 file your downloading or a piece of spyware/malware? The RIAA will get a lot farther by characterizing P2P apps as a very dangerous thing for computer users and their cherished data. At least it will go a lot farther than the stupid anti-consumer lawsuits they keep filing. Dumbasses.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-03-2004, 09:50 AM:

Here's another item showing the ISPs really need to get on the ball with fighting viruses.

Apparently, there is a new worm in the wild, called the Sasser worm. The news services are saying it is spreading like wildfire, although I do suspect there may be a bit of exaggeration happening. They're kind of short on the details about it and how computers get infected with it. However, I know one person whose home machine may already be hit with it (he says the machine is running very very slowly and reboots itself often).

It is just not enough anymore for end users to run firewalls, anti-viral software and anti-spyware applications. The ISPs need to join the fight.

Posted by Kyle Caudill (Member # 1252) on 05-05-2004, 01:52 PM:

Its kind of long, but amusing. A guy scammed the scammer.

http://www.419eater.com/html/stev_ebe.htm

Posted by Dominique Replogle (Member # 2387) on 05-05-2004, 02:03 PM:

Hey Mark, Remember that five bucks you owe me? [thumbsup]

Once you cash that check we will go to Taco Bell on you!

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 05-05-2004, 11:00 PM:

OMG That 419eater.com site is tooo freaking funny. Make sure you check out all the photos in the trophy room! [thumbsup]