Social Engineering: For the avoidance of Mrs Mary Williams

This is not for me

I just got an email with the subject Dear Customer: I would presume whoever is addressing me does not know my name; the email portends to be from MoneyGram with the email address of money326@msn.com which immediately indicates that it is really not from MoneyGram.

I will humour myself by reading the email and you will find my comments inline in parentheses, it will just pertain to the content of the email, I will not do much technical analysis to ascertain the genuineness of this email.

From Office Of The Money Gram Money Transfer. Accra-Ghana Republic / Address No 450 Ring Road Accra-Ghana.

[Now, I would have thought this would come from the office of the MoneyGram Money Transfer Bureau, emphasis on Bureau, which might be in Accra but is it not the Republic of Ghana?]

Appearances of deception

Website:WWW.money-gram.com/

[The genuine MoneyGram Money Transfer website is http://www.moneygram.com the one in this email does not exist.]

Phone:+233244841003.

[Yes, that is a Ghanaian phone number but I doubt I will be calling it.]

Email: mg179435@w.cn

[Now, I have a second email address and this is in a Chinese domain.]

Dear Customer:

[These people do not know me, here again I am being addressed as Dear Customer.]

The letter

Be inform[ed] that we have been giving [given] and [an] instruction by, Hon Ado Seth, DP Ministry of Finance Accra Ghana to start sending to you $5000usd everyday through money gram money transfer, Until your total amount sum ( $1.2 Million us Dollars, AID FUND) one million two hundred thousand united state dollars is completely transferred to your custody .

[I really cannot be bothered with correcting this, too many errors in this paragraph, I could do with a transfer of $5,000 into my custody and eventually my bank account everyday but I will settle for Paypal donations to made though clicking on the Donate button at the top right of this blog.

But read this, I am over a period of 240 days supposed to receive the sum of $1.2 million in daily deposits of $5,000; I suppose a vulture is a patient bird but I doubt it will wait for the egg to be laid, incubated, hatched and the full lifecycle of the bird to carcass before it feeds.

The poor Ghanaians whose aid pornography pictures have moved aid agencies to sympathy to donate to their plight are not going to get sight of the aid, it is about to be drip-fed $5,000 a time into the account of Dear Customer, Yours Truly.]

Affected by an avoidance

Today our department have affected [Why can’t they avoid affording the misuse of affected for effected?] your first transfer of $5000usd to your name, Transfer Reference below.

[Indeed, they need to be reminded of my name which they never knew before.]

Sender First Name=Dr Victor

Sender Second Name =Ike

Amount=$5000.00 USD

Question=Code

Answer=233.

[Who is Dr Victor Ike?]

Contact Dr Victor Ike, Foreign Operation Manager on the below address, to issue to you, your Fund Clearance Certificate and give to you your Money Gram Transfer Control Number to pick-up your first payment of $5000 us dollars.

[So, Hon Ado Seth (Don’t be deceived by titles, this man is hardly Honourable by any stretch of the imagination.) in corrupt enterprise with Dr Victor Ike are in this together and looking further down, the latter is the Foreign Operation(s) Manager at MoneyGram in Ghana – Interesting.]

Dr Victor Ike{Foreign Operation Manager Money Gram Accra Ghana}

E-mail {mg179435@w.cn}

[And though he works in Ghana he has a Chinese email address.]

Tell-+233244841003.

She’s a scammer

Cheers

Mrs Mary Williams.

[Mary Williams? Cheers? Maybe I am being pedantic here but you cannot without knowing me end up closing an apparently formal letter with Cheers. Who the heck is Mrs Mary Williams and to what do I owe this random windfall from three unknown people in Ghana?]

Like they say, if it is too good to be true, it probably isn’t worth your while. To close, I just attempted a search on Mrs Mary Williams and before I finished typing, the suggestion of “Mrs Mary Williams email” was offered by Google and well, she appears to have a reputation for scamming people.

Mrs Mary Williams, please go take a running jump off Fort Elmina, you’ll be doing yourself the greatest favour.