An interesting 419 scam has been making the rounds in the past weeks. It claims that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “in conjunction” with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are about to give recipients of the email the sum of $10 million (8 million EUR).
Part of the email
reads something like this:
“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and some other relevant Investigations Agencies in the United states of America, Australia, UAE,Europe etc, have recently been informed through our Global intelligence monitoring network that you presently have a transaction going in Africa which was fully endorsed in your favor accordingly.”
“It might interest you to know that we have taken out time in screening through this project as stipulated on our protocol of operation and have finally confirmed that your contract payment of Ten Million Seven Hundred Thousand United States Of America Dollars ($10.700.000.00) is 100% genuine and hitch free.
“Meanwhile the bank director made us to know that one Mr. Joseph Croft has contact them for the payment of the fund to him as the rightful beneficiary to the fund.”
The potential victim is asked to confirm that he/she did not authorize one Mr. Joseph Croft to receive the money on their behalf.
Users must allegedly contact the Royal Bank of Benin to claim the money. They have to provide a code and some personal details, including name, home address, phone number, occupation, age and marital status.
By the looks of it, this is most likely an advance fee scam in which the crooks ask the victim to send them a certain amount of money that’s presumably needed to complete the transaction.
Internauts are advised never to respond to such emails. Fraudsters are leveraging the names of high-profile agencies in order to make everything more convincing, but in reality, none of the aforementioned organizations would ever be involved in such money transfer operations.
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