Fergie's Tech Blog

Katrina spawns 419-styled scams

Gregg Keizer writes in TechWeb News:

Nigerian-style scams that use the ongoing Katrina disaster are beginning to appear, said a security firm Wednesday.

In the typical 419 scam -- so called because of the numbering of the relevant code in Nigeria’s criminal law, and made popular by Nigerian-based fraudsters -- criminals send out spam promising recipients a share of a fortune supposedly inaccessible to the sender. In return for an upfront fee -- and therein lies the scam -- the recipient is told he’ll collect millions.

"The 419 scammers have decided to see if they can get a piece of the [Katrina] pie," said Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs in an alert posted to its site Wednesday. "[This sample] has all the hallmarks of a classic 419 - grammar and spelling mistakes and a large sum of money."

In the mass-mailed e-mail, the writer claims to be a Mexican national and illegal alien who works on a rescue team in New Orleans. "In a relief effort to save the lives of the indigenes, I personally made a recovery of some treasure boxes which belong to a private banking firm, here in New Orleans. These boxes which are currently in my possession were found to be containing uncountable number of defaced foreign currencies, which ranges from United States Dollars down to Japanese Yens, thus running into hundreds of millions of U.S. Dollars when converted," the scam goes.

posted by Fergie @ 9/07/2005 11:59:00 AM