Anatomy of a Scam

I like to look at my spam folder in Gmail every once in a while. You never know what type of gems pop up in there. Today I found a scam email that rose the bar for letters from Nigeria. This time around, the story was that the FBI found that I was communicating with scamsters. The FBI negotiated on my behalf with some foreign country and has a settlement to pay me in the form of an ATM card. I just need to send in $250.00 total...

Here are the pieces of the email that I thought were getting better. They reference some specific units in the FBI. They also put the J. Edgar Hoover postal address in the email. And get this. They even make reference to the fact that there are some scammers out there that I may have lost money to! Precious.

Where do they continue to foul up? Well the email came from somewhere in France. Umm the FBI sends email from fbi.gov, right? They also want me to send my $250 to someone using their Gmail address. Once again, wrong domain. Gmail put all kinds of warnings around this email stating that it is most likely a ploy to steal my money.

Nice try guys. You are indeed stepping up your scamming skills. But you have not hit the home run yet. When will they ever learn?