One of the real “delights” of being treasurer of an organisation in this digital age is fending off the impertinent intrusions of scammers attempting to relieve the unwary of the organisation’s funds.
Fortunately I have not been inundated with such offensive behaviour, until recently.
The approach takes the form of an email headed “Quick One” or “Payment” from the President of the organisation – in this case the NZ Guild of Agricultural Journalists – and “signed” with their name. It’s all very polite, the salutation addresses me by name, is reasonably formal with good English and no spelling mistakes, as follows:
“Hello Mich,
I need you to set up a bank transfer for a payment ,let me know if you can handle this right away so I can send you the bank details and can you please confirm to me the recent available account balance? Waiting for your reply.
Thanks,
(President’s name)
So far, so good apart from misspelling my name and a misplaced comma.
But, the President has never asked for any funds in the past; we don’t conduct business in Australia on any regular basis; a payment of that amount is somewhat out of the ordinary; and as a reasonably well managed organisation we would need a tad more documentation than a barefaced request such as this. There is no mention of what the funds are for, nor is there any explanation of the need for urgency.
To see how far this would go I asked for details and immediately received this:
“Hello Mick,
Amount….$4,250,Its for financing an urgent project and the account will reimburse next
week Thursday unfailingly.please kindly send the swift copy after the payment.”
When I did not respond for a couple of hours it was followed by this
“This is the account information below,kindly to me the swift copy after you have made the payment,for Board record keeping and also i can send it to the beneficiary for proof of payment.
Bounyadeth Viora, Bank West, Account number: 0224484, Bsb: 302969, Bank Swift Code: bkwaau6p, Bank Address: 179/180 Macquarie st Liverpool nsw 2170
waiting to hear from you”
This reply was a little bit sloppy – the word spacing and capitalisation deteriorated, and the account holder’s name looked a bit dodgy (maybe he/she was getting over-excited by the prospect of easy money). The bank details checked out, but I suspect the account would disappear, along with the funds, if any payment were made. The kicker comes when you look at the reply email address – an innocuous looking, and probably untraceable impersonation in the form <ChiefExeOfficer1@mail2visionary.com>
The President of the Guild was astounded to learn that she had allegedly asked me to transfer funds to Australia, especially with no explanation. So the ChiefExeOfficer1 was advised to “Fuck off”. Sadly there was no response to this gentlemanly instruction.
What brasses me off is that despite being told to stop bothering me in basic Anglo-Saxon terms, as above, he or she waited a couple of weeks and decided to have another go with a slightly different message, again “signed” in the name of our president but with a different return email address.
“I need you to initiate a bank transfer or cash deposit in amount of $9,780 AUD for me today. Let me know if you are available, so I can forward the beneficiary details.” <presidentp@mail-me.com>.
The expletives were not deleted from my response. But the problem is that they cannot take a hint and I am now getting requests on a weekly basis – only the email addresses are changed to fool the naive. I have tried the approach by listing fabulous amounts of money available in various currencies including bitcoins, but the irony is lost on them. They keep asking for more.
As if this isn’t bad enough I have also been harassed by dodgy share-broker calls. In the last couple of months I have been on the receiving end of serial cell phone calls from a London number, only to be greeted by a very Asian sounding person trying to flog shares in international companies. Do they think i am Warren Buffet? At least they quickly mumble the name of the company they represent. But they get the short shrift as well.
I guess you just have to become suspicious, cynical and very tight fisted.
WorkinWords 