The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk WARNING - Scam Artist BE AWARE!

Thought I'd let the rest of you guys know someone has begun using the Stovebolt page as a means of forwarding their "[censored] Scam"!

Most of you are probably aware of this type of scam, where some foreign dictator has stockpiled large sums of money, and needs your help to get it back. They'll gladly pay you a large portion of the proceeds for your assistance.

The scam is old as the hills, but I continue to see/hear of people every day, here at the Bank where I work that fall victim to these deals.

I forwarded on to Peg, an E-mail I received today. It came addressed as a contact being made through the Stovebolt editor.

Just wanted to let you guys know this was going on. Below, is the content of the e-mail I received:

the following message through The Stovebolt Page Forums:
--------------------
Dear Manager,

I have the pleasure to send you this mail which I hope you will treat as
confidential. I am Engr. Ojum B.Elemchukwu, A 48 years old man and the Executive
Director Projects Officer with the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development
Commission (OMPADEC).

This Commission was set up by the Federal Government of [censored], due to
agitation by the Oil Producing Areas, whose Ecosystem is being destroyed by the
activities of Oil Companies. This Commission is now known as [censored]-Delta
Development Commission, (NDDC).

In the 2003/2004 fiscal, (NDDC) was allocated the sum of 180 Million United
States Dollars for its activities. During the same period the Commission carried
out Developmental Projects, amounting to the sum of 171 Million Dollars, having
a suplus of sum amount of US$9,000,000.00

I am writing you for assistance in transfering the sum of US$9,000,000.00
Million Dollars into your account. And, i am using this opportunity to crave
your indulgience in transfering this money into your account, this transaction
is risk free. It is only myself that is aware of this money.

For your assistance, I am willing to give you 35% of the total sum, while you
will assist me in investing my share in other businesses in your country.

Please if you know you can assist me, endeavour to get in touch with me as soon
as possible so i can give you the necessary details so as to conclude the
transfer within 7 working days.

Best Regards,

so i am not the only one who got an E-mail like this.
mine was shorter but it still had the same idea

you guys need to get an email app w/ a spam filter

Bill

Red,

Excuse my ignorance, but how would that have helped in this situation, where I want to receive notification from the Stovebolt page that I have a message etc? This guy went through the Stovebolt page to get to us.

If I filtered the Stovebolt page, I'd never know if you were trying to get ahold of me.

I made a ton on that deal last yr.

That's a horrible email. By the way I have some swamp land in Florida...

MAN! I was just about to make a killing! :mad:

"Please to understand. We have been most fortunate and wonderful to know Mr. Joker. Kind sir has invested a very large sums of American dollars in our endeavor. Mr. Joker has been also kind to use his long old vehicle truck as a collateral to fund a subsidy on our entire nation."

you know what would be nice, go to the office or where-ever and be able to do business in person. I would love to meet those guys in person..I use to get em all the time but have not received any in a while.......protection must be working,,Fred

I think it's amazing that people actually buy into these types of scams. Just goes to show that there are lots of folks who want the easy way out.... ain't nothing for free in life!

But thanks for the heads up Jed!

That's why my address here has NO_SPAM inserted.

I'm with you Larry Bear,

There aint no FREE lunch!

You'd be amazed at the number of people we see every day that fall for this or my favorite... The foriegn lottery scam.

Did you go to Tanzania and buy a lottery ticket?

Then how in the heck do you think you won?

Jed - that mail wasn't FROM the stovebolt page, they just referred to it some way, or somehow have yer address associated w/ it [VERY unlikely they got it here]

a spam filter would have detected the well known BS pattern in the message and/or subject line, and just popped it into the 'junk box' where you wouldn't even hafta see it - use your mail app to "view all headers" and find the 'reply-to' address of that mail - won't be anything[at]stovebolt.com

I get those "[censored] scam" emails quite regular and they're always detected as spam regardless of where they're from - last one yesterday was from [email protected], and as usual the address, subject and from lines were ALL CAPITALS - a good clue any mail is junk and a good reason for alla you non-typer newbies to not use all caps alla time!

Bill

Bill, (Red58)

I do have spam filters etc. on my accounts, as well as extensive filters here at work via our LAN connection.

However, the e-mail I received listed the sender as being [email protected] and indicated it was a message from another stovebolt member. None of the information was in an "All Caps" format.

Had it not been addressed in the manner it was, and not been identical to what I've received from legitimate stovebolt contacts in the past, I would have simply deleted it and gone on.

The fact that it had all appearences of being a legitimate Stovebolt communication led me to pass on the warning to Peg and the other members here.

In looking at the member directory, there is a Bene out there. Although I doubt it's related, as his screen name is Bene's 39.

no problem...

i'm most likely OVERDRAWN by more than that...

then someone who has your email addy in his address book got a virus! and that's where your address came from - as I said if you can "view all headers" I'd bet you find that mail was not SENT from stovebolt.com, regardless of what the 'sender' line reads - mail from the editor will have a line like this:
Received from [192.168.0.2] (dpc6714242141.direcpc.com [67.142.42.141]) by a34-mta01.direcway.com
and a 'Message ID' line that is "a whole buncha [email protected]"

good spam detection software reads the headers as well as the visible stuff

Bill

Bill,

I appreciate the education. I can punch the keys, and get most of what I want done, done, but I have very little understanding of how it all works.

When I was selling my truck I got similar email requests for it but the best was from an agent representing a lady farmer in Africa who wanted to remain anonymous. These are fun to receive but there are some dumb people who respond to them, sadly.

There was a bene on here this morning that had just joined today. the E-mail that i recieved was sent this morning. When i looked at his profile it was him all right. Had the same website that was listed on the E-mail.

GMC KID - was that the "cool auto insurance comparison" post? might be somebody joined up just to 'harvest' some mail addys!!

it's worthwhile for everyone to learn how to see the normally 'invisible' header info behind their mails - can quickly tell if the mail is not from who you think it is, and when you report 'spoof mails' to places like the bolt or e-bay or paypal or a bank, it helps them find the culprit if you set the mail up to "view all headers" before you forward it to them - otherwise they have no clue where it came from

Bill

my email consisted of the last 3 paragraphs that were in jeds email

as the saying goes......If it seems too good to be true, it most likely is.
now i have a free truck to give away, and if you want it, all you have to do is give me to of yours, then get someone else to give you two, in exchange for one from you.

I got that email 2 today

GMCKID - who was the "bene"? may be he has a virus, and/or maybe he's the spammer that put up the insurance comparison post? what was the website/email?

Bill

Okay...putting the NO_SPAM back into my email address was a bad idea... :o

the people who fall for scams like that deserve to lose their money, unless they are helpless old people, then it is sad. if they are just idiots then that is their problem. fleecing idiots is almost so good it shouldn't be a crime. if someone is dumb enought to fall for those then so be it. IF SOMETHING SEEMS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE, THEN IT IS!!!

No advice, just what I do: Never open mail unless either I know who it's from, or sounds absolutly legit (I've got a small manufacturing business and get some customer questions). And never, never open attachments from anybody, ever. I don't run anti-virus or anti-spam as they slow you down, 'specially with dial-up.

Paul "Geek" Schmehl has banned this fellow. I'll forward this thread on to him for comment.

Ed Miller had sent us an email also (besides Eric) but he didn't have a copy of the email sent so I was uncertain what to do. I had to shut down the computer from about 2 pm on -- the power was going to be off. Just now got back on.

Paul will send you all some info.

Peg

the one i was getting was paypal. it said that someone was trying to access my acount and they put it on hold until i verified it. and to do that you go to the included link and redo your screen name and password. i clicked the link, then before i did anything , i looked at the address in the address bar, and it wasnt the normal paypal.com address. i called paypal and they told me to forward the email to them at [email protected] and they replied back that it was indeed a scam to get your info. they want them forwarded to them so they can get that site shut down. i was getting about 2 a week from the idiots. and the sad thing, it was identical to the real paypal in looks, type, and logo. could fool almost anyone. :mad:

I get hundreds of these emails a month. I've learned to just ignore them and clean my inbox out of this clutter. Just delete. (sounds like a Nike ad). No one is going to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime with a message starting with "Dear Sir" or "Dearest Madam".
And by all means, no matter how angry you get at these guys,(and it could just be a handful sending zillions of emails), DO NOT REPLY. Once you reply, you're in their data base and they got you!
Aloha,
Rich

This guy registered in the Forum just so he could send his scam messages as private messages to all the Stovebolters. As soon as we were notified, we disabled his account and blocked his IP address at the web server. Unless he changes IP addresses, he will go straight to this webpage every time he tries to load the Forum or any other webpage on our site.

None of us on staff can catch everything that happens here. We're relying on the Stovebolters to tell us when something odd is going on. In this case, we were notified quickly and we cut the guy off within a few minutes of being notified.

So keep up the good work, and we'll do our best to keep the rats out of the corn.

Paypal will always address you by your full name. The spoof sites are commonly full of typos and grammatical errors. Always log in directly to the actual secure site to get your messages from them.

red58 i deleted the email so i do not remember what his website or email adress was

sounds like he's been tagged KID, but I think someone signed up to the forum and was using the profile function "click here to send mail to" for sending their [censored] scam message - guess you just got a short straw

hopefully Paul can fix things so it won't happen again!!

Bil

HEY..as long as the topic is scams, where are the "duck" engines, inquiring Mallards want to know!


Stu-DUK

Pete in ME - and any one else that's of his mindset; please practice safe computing and be a good netizen - get an AV product and keep it up to date!

I'll also hazard a guess that you haven't done any Microsoft (assuming that's your operating system) updates since you got your computer - most people don't. By not doing the updates and not having anti-virus software on your computer (unless you're running Linux or MacOS - then it's a bit better) you're opening yourself up to mal-ware of all sorts. The AV software accounts for minimal performance delay. What will account for MAJOR performance hits are all the spyware, adware, bots, trojans, worms and viruses (or is that virii?) that will make themselves at home on your computer when you visit some of those sites you do - and they don't have to be the really bad ones and you don't have to open e-mail attachments to get them, either.

I know of what I speak - I fix computers all the time that haven't been updated and haven't used up-to-date AV products. Of course, it keeps me in really nice $$$ so I can enjoy my Stovebolt hobby!

Then there's the [censored] (or 419) letter (here's some information on it - http://www.secretservice.gov/alert419.shtml) which started this thread. And here's how to report it - http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/[censored]/reporting.htm. And yes, the Secret Service does keep track of these. By the way, they're not all from or regarding [censored] either as I seen some from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, The Congo and Brazil, among others.

Let me urge everyone to get and maintain a quality anti-virus product on their computer and keep your operating system up-to-date with the vendor patches. We'll all be the better for it.

If anyone has a question regarding this topic, please feel free to private message me or ask on the forum and I'll answer as I can.

Sorry for the long reply, but it's something I feel very strongly about.

Jim

I got one from the pay pal regarding verification also. Figured it might be a fake so deleted it. Thanks for the heads up Kahaluurich

I saw this scam in 2001. It was sent to several ER Physicians in the Orlando FL area where I was working at the time. I think an in house e-mail come out soon after to warn us about this scam. I did not know it was still out there! "I think this is a pure GREED issue, on both parties."

thanks for the heads up.

Cliff59

I used to tell them to send all correspondence to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC, attn George W.