by Peter Zack

A cautionary tale in case you get one of these emails.

From: What the Duck

Scams, if you have an email address (if you’re here you do, of course), you get the emails all the time. If you are like me, with a dedicated web site and a visible email address, you get dozens daily. Spam filters do a good job but just to make sure that something legit isn’t missed, I still check the spam daily for a real client who might be filtered.

I don’t need anything enlarged, I like my job and am not looking for a new one.  I’m happy that my wife arranges all my dates. I have enough credit cards and suspect there’s no free money anywhere. I hate survey’s and loved Seinfeld’s solution to that.

So recently I got one I knew was a scam. It sounded similar to many of the rest.  I decided I wanted to see how this was going to ‘play out’ and how much they might want to take me for.  Really it was a waste of time but possibly worth sharing with others in case you think you are going to land the “big deal”. Plus I kind of liked the idea of getting them all excited, wasting some of their time, that they might have a sucker on the hook to rob from.

In total, there were 12 emails back and forth . First I’m not a full time wedding planner, even if I do help brides with many of the arrangements. So there’s his first mistake, not knowing what I do.

So here’s how it works:

The wording changes from email to email but the common theme is a “logistics manager” or “agent” the scammer will mention in most at some point.

The very first email:
From: Williams Egobia <williamsegobia@live.com>
To: xxxxxxx@yahoo.com
Sent: Sat, January 30, 2010 1:37:09 AM
Subject: I need an experienced wedding planner

However,because of security reasons and confidentiality reposed on you and because they do not have credit card facility,we have decided that only you will have to handle the credit card information.

He couldn’t trust the “Logistics Agent” with the credit card info, only me! I feel so privileged!

Now when you think about this, the logistics agent is arranging travel visas and transportation for all the guests. So you trust him to get you safely into a country, get everyone to the same place on time etc. But you can’t trust him to see your Visa card? He has all your personal info for a travel visa but not the credit info.

Yeah sure. I’m some internet stranger that you don’t know, that you trust with thousands of dollars. Foolishness.

So at the end, I told him the deal was off and that I would no longer waste any more time with this. He threatens the FBI on me. Humm, since I don’t live in the USA, I guess I don’t have to worry about them much.

Finally I get these 2 emails, the last of which showed up in my spam folder, how ironic.