E-mail Purportedly from Chief Cop is a Scam, Caution Police

Police are cautioning everyone at Calgary (Alberta, Canada) that a scam electronic mail is presently circulating online while purporting to be from Rick Hanson, the man who heads Police in Calgary, thus published Calgarysun.com in news on April 18, 2011.

Sent from one Yahoo account, the e-mail depicts Hanson's photographs along with precise addresses as well as contact details.

Say Police, the scam seeks to tell the victim that there's an inheritance worth multimillion dollars for him from someone and that it's necessary that he wire a particular fee so that the legal expenses as well as paperwork can be fulfilled. Calgaryherald.com published this on April 18, 2011.

Evidently, the e-mail mentions that the recipient must overlook everything that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Calgary Police have overtime cautioned with respect to dispatching funds since Hanson had himself said that the inheritance was genuine.

Meanwhile, Police explained the method through which the above kind of scams operated.

They said that the scammers, prior to dispatching their e-mail, seized the e-mail ids and names of certain netizens following which they wrote to the potential victims that an enormous sum of money awaited them as inheritance from their kin which could be obtained after certain processing fees were sent.

Police highlighted that the above mentioned incident had become widespread like the manner explained. However, it was entirely false as also only bait for enticing unwitting residents. Such scams had fraudsters exploiting victims' wishes for becoming rich fast, officials added.

Furthermore, owing to the maliciousness of the above kinds of scams, Police have warned Calgarians for maintaining vigilance online as also not wire money to unknown individuals.

They said that genuine estates never contacted heirs or trustees in the way described as well as never pledged for executing the exercise via illegal means. In case anybody promised a user 20% of a particular wealth in exchange for nothing more than personal banking information, the offer was nothing but a scam.

Finally, Police advised anybody who'd been victimized with the above alternatively any other same kind of scam to dial their helpline phone-number and report the incident.

Related article: E-Crime Reporting Format To Be Launched in July

» SPAMfighter News - 4/25/2011