Saturday, February 11, 2017

Priceless 3: Discovery

Priceless is...

... that moment when I discovered a scammer, thanks to Google image search.
Perhaps I'm a skeptic, but my skepticism paid off this time. I accepted a LinkedIn request which I didn't feel too good about after a week, and within the hour he sent a message with terms of endearment. Automatic response - pukeless gagging (I was at a management meeting, so my reaction was muted).

I just did a simple google image search and found the exact profile photo on a forum sharing scammer stories. And on this thread was a string of other photos of the exact same guy. Poor dude must've got his social media account hacked and photos stolen.

But the funny part was reading the storyline of the scam. In that particular case, the scammer was posing as an engineer on a ship and he wanted to send his valuables to the victim because pirates were going to attack his ship. He started by emailing the victim, telling her of how much he loved and trusted her, and after this ordeal he was going to marry her, his darling and wonderful wife. The scam was obvious (to one who didn't have rose-tinted lenses on) when it was revealed that to retrieve the parcel containing his valuables, the victim had to pay a couple of hundred Euros as tax or some other charges.

I couldn't finish reading all the cock and bull story emails that was reproduced on the thread. Much of it was copy pasting and the spelling and grammatical errors were horrendous. Errors were copied and even the terms of endearments were recycled! And the events, illogical! I'm sorry, but if I were a scammer, I'd put in much more effort at sounding legit and a wee bit more smarter.

By the way, mine was a Medical Doctor. I wonder what sappy story was in the pipeline for me! 😂

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