14 DAY TRIAL // Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s former CEO, has made a lot of headlines lately after announcing his retirement, so scammers have decided to use his name in one of their schemes.
A 419 scam aimed at French-speaking users has been identified by experts from ESET. The bogus emails inform recipients that they’ve won €250,000 ($342,000) in a Microsoft lottery after their email address has been selected based on certain criteria.
Recipients are asked to respond to the emails and provide their personal information. In the next phases of the scheme, victims are probably instructed to wire some money. To make everything more legitimate looking, a copy of the winning ticket is attached to the messages.
The ticket contains a photo of Bill Gates and the logo of Microsoft. However, in the name of the foundation that’s giving away the money, Bill Gates is misspelled as “Bill Gate.” The word “sponsored” is also misspelled as “sponsord.”
The scammers clearly haven’t put too much thought into these emails. The address they list for the Bill Gate Foundation is different from the one of the real Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, despite the fact that this isn’t secret information.
