Welcome and happy reading!

Since, like anyone else, I receive tons of scam emails and snail mail letters, I decided to present here some of these. All of these (and many more which I just delete) are scams. This means, what the senders have in mind is to racket one of us. And according to what I've seen, they do succeed quite often.

If you have similar letters in your mailbox, either disregard or play with the person knowing that you can't give him (or her) any information about:

  1. Your bank account,
  2. Your address — or any valid address if that matter,
  3. Your family, and
  4. any other information that you judge private or even intimate.

Ha! I say "Your"... even if you don't like your neighbor at all, don't give his information either. The Internet leaves tracks (hackers in the US are being caught one after another!) and you would certainly be in even bigger trouble.

In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy reading these letters as I do myself once in a while. 8-)I do not always add comments with the letters since I usually don't have time to do so, but there would often be a lot of joke to tell!

Soap Bubbles

 

Latest Scams
  • Last update: 07/06/2017
    There is a new one. This is from a French company if we believe the signature at the bottom (Saint Ouen) that is attempting to sell us extra domain names just because. I have had spontaneous renewal warnings and offers to get hosting or websites, but I don't recall a consolidation before. That's funny though because I purchase my domains via GoDaddy.com and they should know that GoDaddy.com already offers you to purchase all the .net, .org, .lol, etc. so if someone was to do that, they'd do it then, wouldn't they?!
     
     
    ...
     
  • Last update: 05/11/2013

    "La garde des contacts" -- mise à part que je n'ai jamais entendu cette expression (peut-être est-ce Canadien?! Ha! Ha!), il me semble que s'il s'agit du tout première message entre nous, dire que garder contact est important me semble un peu prémature, non?!

    And of course, I do want to talk with someone named "CRUELLE"... 8-)


    Return-Path: <riccardo.narcisi@alice.it>
    X-Original-To: alexis@m2osw.com
    Delivered-To: alexis@m2osw.com
    Received: from smtp303.alice.it (smtp303.alice.it [82.57.200.119])
        by mail.m2osw.com ...
     
  • Last update: 03/31/2014

    This one is quite interesting...

    The subject is in French.

    The From is in English.

    The email content is in Italian.

    Who the hell is not going to notice that?!

     
  • Last update: 09/30/2012

    Got this one today. I thought to myself... "it means your email address is about to be deactivated" That would be great! I wouldn't receive over 1,000 messages of spam a day anymore (think about it: nearly 400,000 messages a year!)

     
  • Last update: 11/23/2014

    Isn't it ironic that someone would send you an email to tell you that your email account is currently blocked... cheeky

     
  • Last update: 08/30/2011

    I like this one... the guy's name is Babar. I know it's a real African name, but because of the movie with Babar the elephant, I find it funny.

    One surprising comment in this email:

    Extend my greetings to your family.

    Usually they ask you to be hyper ultra discrete with these matters... Anyway, I let everyone know that I'll get my share very soon and that Pat Babar is saying hi...

     
  • Last update: 07/25/2023

    HOW TO VERIFY YOUR COMPANY's STATUS

    Each state will have a different website. I know of the California Statement of Information Office Online, with which you can verify whether a corporation is active or not. After a search, an ACTIVE status means your filing is still good, however, it does not mean you are compliant with the $25/year payment. For that, if you know you did not send anything yet, I think you have to call the office to see where it's at.

    Got yet another Corporate Compliance Center letter. The last one was in 2015. I've put a link below the 2011 version. As you will notice, the letter is slightly different. Not too sure why they would do that. Maybe it makes it a bit harder to search with Google.

    Here are scans. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

     
  • Last update: 06/29/2011

    Isn't it funny when a scammer tells you that his scam is a scam and yet he expects you to reply?

    Oh! And this one is American. It says so! Trust me, I know. I'm sure. Maybe. Who knows.

     
  • Last update: 02/26/2012

    This one is interesting. Why would someone in their right mind offer you 50% of profits on a product that they can buy for 10% of the money they are offering you?! If you think about it for a second, that means he's leaving 45% of the value on the table and giving it to you instead. Assuming that the deal was indeed what he's saying it should be, of course.

    So... say the source product costs $10, my company would pay $10 to buy it, then sell it back to Gavin's company for $100. The profit is $90 and we split 50/50. So my company gets $45 and he gets $45. Knowing that my company is in the U.S., tax wise it is not that great, but that's still quite a bit of money, especially if the transactions quickly climb to be in the millions.

    Yet, if he were to do so with his own company, he would get $90 for himself. Why split with someone else?

    Let me explain: as a real business man, you know that you can create a new business in a day anywhere you need it in the world. So, instead of asking me, this guy could create his own company, say in the Bahamas, and get his $90 taxed at 2%. Why ask me in California instead where company taxes are at 42%?!

    Or... maybe the Abbot's company is not really his company. It could be the company he works for instead.

     
  • Last update: 08/13/2017

     At times I'm wondering whether these guys really are from the military. After all, we've heard of many military funds being stolen This email actually includes a link to the BCC with an article about how two Iraqi Defense Ministers stole $1.2 billion dollars (although they claim their innocence.)

    Similarly, $100M was sent to help the people of Afghanistan and when it was deposited in a Bahrain account, the $100M was down to $52M. Someone clearly got a small payment while the cash was in transit.

    In that one case, what I have a real hard time to understand is: why isn't the military aware of wire transfers? Is that just me?!

    Anyway... there are a couple of boxes I have to take care off, talk to you later.