E-mail Scam Targets Executive Director of Northwoods United Way

Tracy Beckman, Executive Director of Northwoods United Way, received telephone calls from friends and relatives, whose e-mail IDs listed in her contact book after a phishing scam hit her. Northwoods United Way is a community (based in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, US) which serves humans and their health.

On June 2, 2010, an unknown hacker dispatched a message from the Yahoo! mail account of Ms. Beckman to all her contacts stating that thieves robbed her along with family and took away all their cash when they were on a holiday in Britain. The e-mail then asked for monetary assistance to get them back home and concluded with the executive director's signature.

Commenting on the unfortunate fraud, Beckham stated that she wasn't too anxious of the scam since she felt that majority of the e-mail recipients would certainly realize that it was a fraud and so would not believe it, as reported by Waow on June 3, 2010.

Despite what Beckham thought, a friend of hers did nearly what the fake e-mail instructed.

The friend, who replied back, wrote that he would send the cash at the earliest possible time and he'd wire it through Western Union, as reported by Wjfw on June 2, 2010.

Beckham states that fortune this time favored her friend as the planned wire-transfer through Western Union could not go through. Beckham reports that Western Union told her friend that it wasn't possible to wire such a large sum of money; consequently, the transfer didn't materialize.

A disaster therefore got turned away, while Beckham is gratified that the scam merely made an impact on her e-mail.

Remarking on e-mail scams generally, Rhinelander Police Department's Captain Ron Lueneburg stated that online scams similar to the current one were extremely difficult to investigate as commonly the scammers operated from another country, which was beyond the local police's jurisdiction, as reported by Wjfw on June 2, 2010.

Because of the issue of jurisdiction, local police didn't devote a lot of time to the said type of scams. Hence, the officials suggested that people should realize how important it was for maintaining self-defense.

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

» SPAMfighter News - 6/14/2010