the charity being HIM

I'm not sure whether phony appeals to get a particular person out of a jam are "charity scams" per se, but I just got this e-mail:

***************************************************************************************
Hello,

I'm sorry I didn't inform anyone about my trip to London, United Kingdom.
Unfortunately I was mugged at gun point, at the hotel park am staying. My
mobile phone, cash and credit card was stolen but luckily for me I still
have my passport. I was able to make contact with the UK Police and directed
to the Consulate, but they seems to be taking things too slow. My flight
leaves in few hrs from now, and am having problems settling the hotel bills.
I already suggested to postpone the bills but the hotel management insisted
I should contact my family & friends at home to send funds my way to settle
bills and also have extra money to return home. Please get back to me asap.

Thanks,

--
Cxxxxxxxxx
Head Football Coach
Sxxxxxxxxxxl
xxxx, MN
320-xxxx

Mod edit to remove innocent person's stolen information - Samantha
******************************************************************************************

Googling turns up the language as boilerplate. I suspect Mr. "Hartman" targeted me with this by harvesting e-mail addresses from football coaching Web sites, which I frequent. So don't be surprised to find appeals like this similarly "tailored" to your interests in the hope you'll help out someone you might consider an unmet colleague. I haven't checked, but he's probably stealing a name of a real person in that real position.

Robert

This is an increasingly common scam, so common that it has come to have its own name: "the London scam." Most often these scammers hijack a legitimate email account by using "phishing" emails (fake bank account verification, fake email provider verification etc.) in order to get a person's password and take over the account. Then they proceed to send emails like that one to everyone on the original email owner's contact list.

It looks like what you have posted is a new twist on that theme, targeting people by their interests rather than finding direct personal contacts.

Thanks for posting this new variation.

(I deleted the name and address because it does check out as a real person who is obviously innocent.)

As you can see by http://coachhuey.com/index.cgi?board=ge ... read=44933 , this one is indeed targeting frequenters of that message board.

I think it's a vain hope that his situation will be improved by deleting his name & cx info from here after it's been used in this scheme. At this point I'd've thought it better to disseminate it in the hope the real person will be alerted by someone to this misappropriation, in case he can do something to protect himself. As you can see, the people on that message board are asking for his name. But if that's the way you roll, OK.

Robert

Robert,

We just have a policy of not exposing innocent people to further exploitation of their information. It is just something we do even for people who have exposed themselves on the internet. once a person's information has been lifted, it is impossible to get it back. Scammers often exchange or sell the script they have for more money. We just don't want to make it any easier for them.

Your point is well taken that is is best not to expose your real life information to the whole world because some people will find a way to use it for nefarious purposes.

We would do the same for you.

Dear all,

My e-mail address was hacked on 30 March. The hacked stolen my hotmail account and sent the following message to all of my friends.

Hello,

I'm sorry I didn't inform anyone about my trip to London, United Kingdom. Unfortunately I was mugged at gun point, at the hotel park am staying. My mobile phone, cash and credit card was stolen but luckily for me I still have my passport. I was able to make contact with the UK Police and directed to the Consulate, but they seems to be taking things too slow. My flight leaves in few hrs from now but am having problems settling the hotel bills. I need a quick loan to settle the bills and my transport to the airport. I promise to reimburse immediately I arrive back home safely. Please get back to me asap.

Thanks,

The hacker is very deceitful. He is familar with account ownership validation method of webmail. When he access my hotmail account, he changed by backup e-mail and all of my personal information. Therefore, I could not reset my password or recover my account through Microsoft's system. Fortunately, Windows Live ID has a trusted-PC function and record my laptop. I could reset the password through the trust PC.

One of my German friend had replied the hacker. Fortunately, he is a smart guy and did not trap by him. The Hacked provided the contact method to my friend

Dear XXX

Glad you replied back. It was a horrible experience but glad I wasn't physically injured. The amount am needing is about $2000 , that will cover all my expenses to settle the bills and extra to return home. You can just have the money wired on my name via Western Union Money Transfer and I'll settle the bills myself.

Here's the details you will wire it to :

Name : XXX
Address: 864# Irving Street , London WC2H 7AT United Kingdom.

Please send me the transfer details immediately it has been transferred. I'll stand near a computer to check back.

Thanks,

XXX

I just go to the Police Station, the duty officer said as the case did not cause any damage to any person. They will not open the file for this case for further investigation. The duty officer also did not record the contact information of the hacker. Therefore, I would like to reveal the reply e-mail of the hacker to my friend, hope everybody would learn from this case.

This is the mail of the hacker: (He use this mail box to replace my original back up mail)

[email protected]

Thank you for posting this information here kwuntinchan. It is great that you were able to get control of your email account back. This kind of scam usually starts with them "phishing" the password.

It is some times possible to involve the email provider to get control of your email account.

I am glad the thief didn't get any money from your friends.

Thank you for being part of ScamWarners.