The scammers inform victims that they have to pay the insurance fees

Jul 3, 2013 18:01 GMT  ·  By

Another interesting advance fee scam has been spotted by experts. This time, scammers try to trick unsuspecting users by telling them that they’ve won a large amount of money in the “Pepsi Cola Bottling Company 2013 Grant compensation.”

Entitled “Attention Consumer/Email Owner,” the emails identified by Hoax Slayer read something like this:

“Your e-mail address was among the lucky winners of the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company 2013  Grant compensation and You have therefore been approved for a lump sum payout of USD $890,000.00 and Participants were selected through MTN Global Network online ballot system drawn.

A Cheque of USD$890,000.00 has been Issued to you and deposited with the FedEx Courier Company (West Africa,Nigeria) For Delivery to you and For your information, we have paid the Delivery fee and Security Keeping fee & Shipping charges as well as the Vat fees.

But we did not pay for the Insurance fees because we don't know when you will be contacting them via email for your package, so you will have to pay the sum of $141 USD to the FedEx Delivery Department for the Insurance Fee to enable the insurance company of Nigeria Insured your winnings Package for delivery to you at your residential address.”

What’s interesting about this particular advance fee scam is that, unlike other campaigns, it informs potential victims upfront that they have to pay a certain fee to get the prize money.

Most scammers ask for the payment of these fees only after the victim responds to the initial email.

Of course, FedEx and Pepsi have nothing to do with this, but the scammers are leveraging the companies' names to make everything more legitimate looking. Those who fall for it and wire the money will likely never get it back, so beware!