Spam or Scam?
Put it this way: do you think it’s a good idea to give your bank information (i.e., account number) to a complete stranger? If so, then I’ve got a few bridges to sell you.
In this particular case, the indispensable Snopes has already disposed of it:
It’s a well-known scam:
http://www.treas.gov/usss/index.htm?alert419.htm&1
This is a scam that’s been going around for several months…surprised it hasn’t hit the urban legend sites yet. The Washington Post (my local newspaper) published a warning on it in one of Bob Levey’s columns.
Both. This looks like a variation of the old Nigerian wire-fraud scam. The nonsensical English should be your first clue.
Ahh. I didn’t read the whole thing.
Should I put him on a few spam lists?
Daowajan asked us about this e-mail, and then added this to the replies:
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Excuse me, but why would you ask US to read the whole thing and help you if YOU hadn’t read the whole thing yet?
Please take note of my sig, Daowajan, and substitute your name for ‘Benson’
If you mean that he should receive spam himself… naughty, naughty! 
Anyway, as a practical matter, one of two things is true: either this guy’s got his own spam filter (you think he wants to read the kind of dreck he dumps on you?), or the e-mail address is forged (as it almost always is). Worse, they might have forged the e-mail address of some perfectly innocent soul, who has nothing to do with the whole scam!
For the same reason, you could put that e-mail address on your own spam-block list, but I doubt it’ll do much good - he could be back tomorrow with a new forged e-mail address.
JunkBusters.com has a good summary of how to figure out what ISP this spam came from; you could then forward it to that ISP and ask them to give him the boot - most ISPs don’t like being used as hosts by spam/scam artists.
RedNaxela
It’s likely the email address is valid because the entire point is to get you to reply to the email with sensitive information. Gullible people have been taken in by this scam, so someone is checking that email address for replies.
Spam with forged headers is certainly common, but that type of spam usually wants you to visit a website or reply through some other channel. There’s no point forging a reply address if that reply address is your sole contact with the sucker you falls for your scam.
You’re absolutely right, micco - looks like I had the right solution for the wrong problem…
RedNaxela
I got one saying some person died with no next of kin and they want to use me as next of kin to get the inheritance!
True. Whenever I have put a Nigerian e-mail through SpamCop the address has been valid.
Which means very little. In a quick search of their site, I can’t find what SpamCop considers “valid”. You can certainly check whether the email address is a legal format from an existing domain. You could even check the destination server to see if a mailserver is running, but you can’t check to see if an actual email address is good.
There is nothing in the SMTP protocol which allows you to ping an email address and see if it’s valid. You can send mail and check for bounces, but even that’s not definitive. I have entire domains set to dump mail straight to /dev/null so any mail sent to them just disappears into the void. No bounce, but no receipt either.
This is one of the biggest problems with email. If it were possible to efficiently validate email addresses, it would be simple to set up mailservers or mail clients to only accept mail with valid “from” fields. This would solve a major problem with forged headers, but it’s simply not possible with the current state of the protocol.
My favorite part is, “This is my mean reasons for contacting you.” Kind of sums it up right there, doesn’t it?
Ya know, I just heard on NPR the other day that this whole scam comes from an old scam from England that made it’s biggest mark (I.E. took in the majority of suckers) during the depression.
The original scam was based off of Francis Drake’s estate, and he had not relatives, and the British banking system… blah blah blah…
Nothing like using technology for a super-old scam, to give it a nice, shiny cleaning…
The poor English is deliberate. Part of being a good scammer is getting the targeted victim to think, no matter how dumb they really are, that they are smarter than you. It encourages them to drop their guard and trust you more.
Wow. There are still people who haven’t come across this scam?
Everyone has come across this scam for $32 million. I think the $45.5 million scam is a new one.
I saw the thread title, and figured it must be about a new spam type that I’ve been receiving lately. They look like this:
This is the text that shows up, it’s not even HTML (the Content-Type header is “text/plain”). I’ve received quite a few of these, but with different details. What the hell is it?
There are even conferences for this type of business opportunity now.