I received an e-mail this morning from the e-mail address of my best friend in high school. I have not seen this woman in 12 years, when I ran into her at my high school reunion and we exchanged contact info. I think we e-mailed each other a few times then but I have not heard from her since.
The text of the e-mail was as follows:
I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,my fam and I came down here to Wales,United Kingdom for a short vacation unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card and cell were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.
We’ve been to the embassy and the Police here but they’re not helping issues at all and our flight leaves in less than 3hrs from now but we’re having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won’t let us leave until we settle the bills,i’m freaked out at the moment.
and it was signed with her name and a distinctive signature logo that seemed genuine. There was no attachment.
This seemed strange, even if she was distressed and somehow e-mailed this to everyone in her entire address book, she lives in Texas and wouldn’t have “come down to Wales for a short vacation” and she certainly wouldn’t have called a parking lot a park.
So it was obviously a fake e-mail. This was confirmed when I got a real e-mail from her a few hours later (from the same address and with the same distinctive signature) telling everyone that the first e-mail was a fake and should be ignored and deleted.
But why the fake e-mail in the first place? There was no outright plea for help and no contact info and presumably anyone who got this and was concerned would need to call her at her real number or send e-mail back to her at her real e-mail address, when they would find out that she wasn’t in Wales and had not been mugged.
She didn’t send the e-mail. Someone else posted about this scam - this person responded to the email to do some sleuthing. The person on the other end had excuses for everything - why they couldn’t get to some spot, or why they couldn’t call, etc.
Common “stranded traveler” scam. Somebody probably phished her password and sent out a plea for help to everyone in her address book. If anyone responded, they’d be sent intsructions on how to “help” in the form of wired funds.
The US embassy would be in London… and they’re coming all the way from Wales?
I knew it was a scam even before I read of her confirmation that she never sent it. Look at the bad formatting for example (not enough spaces). Possibly your friend was phished. Possibly there was malware on a computer which had her and your email address, and it sent out both addresses to scammers. This computer could have belonged to a third party, someone that you or she CC’d a message to.
Presumably they hacked her email provider to send the email, given that it came with a logo, so they could log back into her email account to see if the bait had been taken.