My friend's cry for help was a scam

These scammers picked the wrong person to try to scam.

Lynne has been a colleague for over 25 years – and a friend. She's been to my home for Sunday lunch. But since she emigrated to California a few years ago, I have not seen her.

So when I received her email headed “My Terrible Experience” I sat up in alarm. Could there have been a family tragedy or had her new home been burnt down? I knew she had been in England recently and I would obviously be willing to help her.

But before I opened it, I noticed something odd. Even though it appeared to come from Lynne's legitimate @gmail.com account, replies were to go to the same name @ymail.com. Ymail is a new service from Yahoo.

Peering into the email (don't do this at home in case of malware), - and remember that Lynne is an accomplished writer – I found the following mess of sentences in tortured English.

Here it is in full:

I'm writing this mail with tears in my eye. I came to London,England on a vacation, unfortunately I got mugged at the park of the hotel I lodged, all my cash,credit card and telephone were stolen from me but luckily for me I still have my travel passports with me. I am in panic now and I don't know what to do.

I have contacted the Embassy via e-mail and the Police are not helping issues at all. They told me to wait for 2-3weeks before any help can be done. Besides,my return flight leaves in 3hrs from now. Also, I have problem settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until I settled my bill.

Presently, I am freaked out and I need your urgent financial assistance.

Lynne.

It's all nonsense – Lynne is British so she has no embassy in London, for starters. And she's married so there's a Mr Lynne to help out.

So I decided to play along.

I emailed “Lynne” with this: “That sounds awful. What can I do to help?”

Minutes later, the response came:

Glad you got my e-mail. I need an urgently help. I have nothing left on me right now and I am lucky to have my life and passport with me it would have been worst if they had made away with my passport. Though, I suffer little injury on my left arm. 

All I need now is just $2,850 to settle the bill, you can have it wired to my name via Western Union. I will show my passport as ID to pick it up here and I promise to pay you back as soon as am back. Here's my info below: 

Name:  Lynne xxxxxxxxx

State: London WC1X 9NX 

Country: United Kingdom 

As soon as it has been done, kindly get back to me with the confirmation number. Let me know if you are heading to the western union outlet now? 

Lynne.

That's about £1,800. So I pretended to be really concerned and expressed my sympathy!

Location, location, location

A few minutes later, the scamsters sent the exact same email with the location again.

I then asked:

Wow, Lynne. 
Am I the only person you contacted?
Must be awful

No, I have contacted friends and relative but I have not heard from them. I`m impatiently running out of time now. I'll forever be grateful if you can help me out of this predicament. Again, keep me posted as soon as you are back from the Western Union outlet.

Lynne.

Now, the scamster's getting desperate. So I emailed:

Where is my nearest Western Union? - I am in London
When I know I'll rush there and send you the money.
This is so awful - I am glad you are not too injured, my dear Lynne.

The reply came quickly.

I actually don't know how it works but I knew if you take cash to any Western Union outlet around you, tell them you want to send money to the address I gave you in my previous mail. They will help you with out on it. Please,get back to me once you have sent the money.

Lynne.

The only location clue was the postcode which points to the Swinton Hotel, an inexpensive hotel off London's Gray's Inn Road. The hotel (which has no intentional involvement) tells me its postcode was used by scamsters six months ago in the same way.

Then I pressed the scamsters further, offering to deliver the cash in person. They told me to go to Peakham Lodge Hotel – no such place in London although there is a Peckham Lodge Hotel.

While it's impossible to say without seeing the machine in California, anti-virus software group PC Tools reckon Lynne might have been the victim of one of the Zeus virus family. This infiltrated itself into her computer, then took over her email address book and finally sent out this rubbish to all her contacts.

It was just a ripoff attempt – and Lynne is fine. She's thanked all her friends for their concern. But it was worrying – as this clever scam was intended to be.