26 July 2007
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Prologue
At some time or other, everyone with a computer has received unsolicited emails from someone, usually about how to make piles of money, getting something free, hosting an online casino and raking in the buckies, increasing your penis / boob size to impress whoever you jump into bed with, and many more -- some of them seem to originate from a foreign country such as Nigeria, telling tales of woe about some person who died and left millions of dollars in a bank account, but the funds are frozen -- unless a proxy is found who would receive the funds in a different country, thus allowing the rightful heir/s to receive their inheritance, a neato sob story, of course, and for whatever reason, they selected YOU as the proxy.
You, the receiver of the email, would receive perhaps 40% of the amount if you contact the sender via email or telephone [long distance, naturally] with all kinds of personal information and promise to receive the funds, after which you would deduct your commission and return the rest to the sender.
I have personally received innumerable spams of this kind over the last several years -- the details change but the concept of an easy unworked for monetary or other gain remains.
A variation comes from Indonesia, Russia or elsewhere stating that they are from a really poor family, the father died of malaria or cholera or whatever, and their mother is handicapped and cannot work -- they immediately need some money to attempt to survive their horrible situation before starving to death. Really heart rending stories -- I always simply click the SPAM button and forget about them.
In the last 6 years I listed items on Yahoo Auctions -- I would sometimes receive inquiries concerning some high priced item/s, saying that they were for a son or other relative studying / living in a foreign country [curiously, usually Africa], that their representative would send me a money order for the price of the things PLUS an additional large amount of money -- I would cash it, then deduct the item amount and send the rest to some orphanage or other entity, also in a foreign land. Their shipper would pick the items up. Just anther SPAM click.
NO, Bill Gates will NOT send you a hundred dollars if you forward his supposed email to ten friends -- that kid with incurable cancer who wants more get well cards to get his name in the Guinness Book of World Records does not exist and the hospital is tired of receiving them for over 4 years already -- the list goes on and on.
These scams have been amply documented on the Internet.
A New One
Saturday, 21 July 2007 -- I received FOUR email inquiries, supposedly from a Renee Saxton, nominally living in Portsmouth / Ohio, asking about FOUR of my YardSaleNet.net items ...
ALGIERS Map FRENCH
19c Hand Colored ETCHING Framed Item ID 25873
PYRENEES Map FRENCH 19c Hand Colored Etching FRAME Item ID 27683
ESTABLISHED SHOP Apartment GARAGES Contents 4 SALE Item ID 27509
ANTIKE Domain ANTIQUES Rug CLOCK Ceramic GLASS Toy Item ID 27550
I replied ...
Renee,
you requested information about 4 of my yardsalenet listings --
are you planning on moving to this area? I am not sure I understand your requests -- can you be more specific, please --
thank you for your interest in my YSN listings, have a restful weekend, and God bless,
Sonny
Tuesday, 24 July 2007 -- he/sh/it answered ...
im not planning to move
to ur area but need all the things i inquire about..............
email me back with the complete cost and ur details so i can issue
ur check out.
Regards.
For someone having a notable interest in a high priced purchase, they certainly cannot spell / type for shit, but hell, even Bill Gates never finished school and he probably has a well paid ghost writer who corrects / otherwise enhances any official correspondance Gates might want to send anyone.
I sent he/sh/it, aka Renee, an email quote, as usual, totalling $276,080.00, after which the expected reply arrives --
Hello ........... I got ur email now and i want u to know im still so much interested in purchasing ur item.
Meanwhile i want u to know a check of 345,000 dollars has been issued and mailed to u already right now by my company in payment of the item.
When the funds clear in ur account u will have to take urs and u will send the excess funds on it to my lawyer in califonia.
Hope i can trust u on this and wont be having troubles with u getting my bought item from u after payment and the remaining funds been transfered to my lawyer who will be handling things for me from that point after funds have been settled.
After getting ur reply i
will email u back with the UPS tracking number for the check and
the check number for ur records.
please reply ASAP
Regards.
the same day I contacted the dude who runs that web site, saying the deal sounded kinda unusual -- he said he unsubscribed the peep because they appear to be a scammer ...
Wednesday, 25 July 2007 -- since I did not bother answering the last email, this is what I got --
Im still waiting to here back from you b4 issuing the check.
just to play along [innocent until proven guilty], I emailed Renee back -- incidentally, the emails from said person NEVER had Renee or any other signature on any of the couple emails sent to me, but the screen name was composed of that forename and corresponding surname ...
Hello again,
YES, the deal seems OK -- I might really prefer you sending me cash though. Certified checks from banks that are NOT local sometimes take a while to clear and I might be charged a commission. Banks are strange sometimes.
Thanks again, have a restful week, and God bless,
Sonny
Friday, 27 July
2007 -- NO, I did not receive the UPS tracking number -- so today, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a UPS guy early this morning with a NEXT DAY AIR EARLY A.M. flat from a William
Vigie in Bakersville / California 93304,
posted on 25 July 2007 -- 
-- cashier check inside for 345k -- 
-- issued by LFR
Communications, Inc. located in Laurel,
Maryland USA -- the Payee was flobiscargo01 -- I did an online search for these names and only
found a reference to LFR, a legitimate financial enterprise. I would have to
send Renee's lawyer about $68,920 after collecting
the balance owed to me for her order plus fees -- needless to
say, my total deposits over a year do not come even close to that
amount.
Such a sale would have allowed me to move from this wonderful capital city and perhaps return to Spain to live quite well on what little pension I receive, PLUS be covered by their universal health care system which is minimalist and overly complicated, at best, in the USA. It was like a ray of hope in an otherwise continuing stagnant situation that I have become used to and learned to accept and live with over the years, always hoping that the big break in the mold would occur.
After five days of sleepless nights / a feeling of being used / helplessness / greatly lowered self esteem / inability to concentrate on stuff, shortness of breath, acute nervousness, among other things, I posted a message with the details of this matter at 09:16h on an AOL message board -- nine replies were received up to 14:44h today, offering me several options -- call LFR to ask if the check is legit, get a lawyer, cash the bank draft, it is a scam so rip up the check, contact the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], and one reply from who somehow traced a Renee Sexton to Shafter / California, about 10 minute drive from Bakersfield, and there is a William Vigie in Bakersfield with an unpublished address and unpublished phone number. It might seem that the two people involved could be real, living in the vicinity of each other in California, but there must be at least hundreds of other individuals having the same names distributed across the globe --
I called LFR, being bounced to a second male -- after giving both of them the details of the hypothetical transaction, I was finally told that the company never issued said check, I should completely disregard it and that they would investigate further, which sounded very naive -- this was an illegal transaction across state lines involving a sizable sum of money, which must at least be a serious federal infraction. Such a large deposit would immediately raise a red flag with any bank on suspicion of drug money laundering or other frowned upon activities.
At this point I have not gotten an email from a Renee or anybody else about this bogus transaction, although they are easily able to do an online search to see if and when the UPS flat was delivered.
It is simply another example of the vulnerability that denizens of what I call the InterNUT expose themselves to while doing anything online -- their activities are tracked via the numerous cookies liberally installed without permission on their computers, both Macs and PCs, all of their personal email and instant message communications are stored on the service provider's servers for several years and may be retrieved / transmitted to interested third parties [perhaps sold to them at a price], downloading photos and visiting web sites linked in emails may contain malicious code / worms / viri, causing their puter toys to crash, stealing all the personal information stored on their gizmo, or making their gadget a slave which propagates such things to other computers worldwide.
Although I have used computers and the WWW since the first Apple computer, my machine was never affected by any of these things, knock on wood, while family members and friends using the Windows operating system have experienced numerous attacks by these hackers, have to reboot from the source disk and change all of their login names and passwords. For that and many other reasons, I always say that HIGH TECHY STUFF SUCKS. Why? In theory, computers / cell phones / iPods and other music players are supposed to make our lives simpler, with more quality leisure time, but in effect all they do is complicate one's life, causing interference, MUCH less time for more important personal things, getting instant satisfaction through RSS feeds of news items that are almost universally slanted and even downright fabricated lies, distancing us from family living in the same home, allowing us to start a collection of virtual pals, much like the invisible friends one may have had as kids, whom do not exist and whom we will never possibly be able to meet. We become enslaved by high tech, sit for hours in front of the monitor, develop a fat computer ass, lose track of time, eat and sleep in front of that CRT tube or flat panel screen, and simply lose our own reality becoming mindless robots in the process. It is a sad state of affairs and gets worse every day.
I have saved the check, the business envelope it came in with my hand printed name and address on the front, and the UPS flat which contained them in a folder, being careful NOT to handle them too much so that any fingerprints of the originators on same might be preserved if any official investigative entity might like to pursue the matter further.
Just in -- an email from Renee sent at 18:39 now provides me with the tracking number --
1Z4643EY1595782645
This is the UPS tracking number for the sent out to u ............ the tracking shows its already delivered and with u ............... kindly go and deposit it in ur account please and get back to me hear so i can know when the funds will be cleared by ur bank and available............
Regards,
My reply, 20:01h -- I am being MUCH more diplomatic than I usually am known to be --
Renee,
YES, your UPS flat was signed for early this morning by a friend who was visiting, because I have a bad hip and it takes me too long to go from the second floor apartment to the entrance door on the first floor --
he suggested that I call the issuing bank in Maryland in order to see if the check would have any charges when deposited in my account at a different local bank --
I was told by a LFR representative that check number was NOT issued by them, and I should disregard it, which I found highly unusual -- as I mentioned in my last email, I would have preferred CASH, which can be sent easily enough in the same manner or via a private courier -- past experience has shown me that bank computer records are many times very untrustworthy for whatever reason.
What do you suggest that I do now?
Sonny
I took the time to produce this Special Report so that my readers might be reminded about the inherent hazards of all these relatively new virtual media of expression and information gathering / dissemination with hopes to prepare them for such potentially negative eventualities.
Do not stash all of your personal information on your computer in some emergency file / folder -- do not automate logins / passwords for any virtual web sites -- do not open attachments of any kind received from unknown senders -- use quality firewall software to hopefully catch any hackers before they affect your computer, keeping up, as quickly as possible, with the updates they provide --
back up any and all files you may use for your personal web pages / blogs / business domains / buying and selling activities online on an external hard drive or CD / DVD in case your computer crashes -- keep your operating system boot disk in an easy to find place in case you have to use it [do the same with your laptop when traveling because you won't be able to return home to get the original necessary boot disk, thus losing the opportunity to use the laptop while away] -- in summing up, USE COMMON SENSE.
Oh, yes, you may recall my negative experience
with Verizon when I ordered DSL online in early March of this year -- 
--
If new information comes in concerning this Special Report, this page will be updated. I hope you found it useful.
God Bless !
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