Puppies Used in E-mail Scam to Dupe Netizens

According to an alert message from the Oregon Attorney General's Office published on nwcn.com on March 19, 2010, hackers are using puppies in the recent Nigerian e-mail scams.

Their alert messages come up after Loretta Updegrave of Salem, Oregon (USA), was supposedly deceived by hackers.

The things started when she was surfing the classifieds and saw that someone has advertised for Yorkshire terriers. These are a breed/class of dogs.

Updegrave showed interest in the advertisement and communicated with the dog-seller, who appeared authentic e-mails, via e-mails. The so-called puppy owner even sent photographs of the puppies for sale.

Afterwards, the dog-seller asked Updegrave to send $400 to Nigeria.

As expected, Updegrave paid advertiser the money. But, the dog seller, gain as expected, went away with the money, and Updegrave never got a puppy.

An annoyed Updegrave stated that trusting anybody on the Web only leads to losing money for every small reason, according to a statement published by nwcn.com on March 19, 2010.

As per the latest report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center, "advanced fee fraud" including the so-called Nigerian scams like the one aforementioned, estimate for the overall 9.8% of the total money lost through Web scams in America. The report further reveals that Nigeria is one of the leading countries carrying out this scam.

In the meantime, security experts recommend that it is a must to report e-mail scams and frauds like the above mentioned Updegrave case as it helps law enforcement agencies to capture the masterminds behind such scams, which are often done by gangs based abroad.

To conclude, Attorney General and THE security experts recommended people who are regular e-mail users to take precautionary steps to avoid being attacked by such a hoax. -First thing first, never get lured by an offer that sounds too good or too realistic to believe, then, do not send money abroad to the unknown people. Moreover, to perform online transactions, like buying puppy online in this case, users should visit authentic sites only, and not trust any one like Updegrave did.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/30/2010