[LINK] I've just won...

[Craig Sanders]

On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 01:45:01AM +0000, Pilcher, Fred wrote:
> "900,000 pounds".
>
> Or so says the SMS I've just received. All I have to do is text the
> "claimcode" to nokia.premium at live.com. No doubt they'll deposit the
> money in my bank account as soon as I send them the details.
>
> This raises the question of how they actually get money out of my
> account once I've sent them the information. Can anyone clarify?

this is probably "advance fee fraud", aka "nigerian scams" or "419
scams".

i.e. once you respond to the bait, they tell you something like "there's
a small hitch - you have to pay some administrative fee, government fee,
tax, lawyer's fee, bank fee, security company fee, storage fee, escrow
fee, etc before your money can be released to you". 

repeat with excuse after excuse and fee after fee until the sucker has
been milked dry.

most people are remarkably unwilling to admit to themselves that they've
been conned, so are quite likely to keep on throwing good money after
bad. the fees tend to get progressively larger each time. get the victim
to pay once and they'll keep on paying - and the more they've "invested"
the more they're willing to pay to recoup their losses: "just one more
payment and i'll get it all back plus the million i'm owed".

and they'll think this even if they have figured out that it's a scam,
that there never was a million dollar or pound prize that they "won".


and even after that, the scammers can pretend to be cops or fraud
investigation agents a few weeks or months later with the story that
they can recover all of the money lost if only the victim pays another
fee. by this time the victim is desperate and probably willing to try
anything - even if they're almost certain it's just a continuation of
the scam.


so they don't get the money directly out of your bank account. they
sucker you into giving it to them.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>