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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master
NRT-0245 FBI, Military names Being Used in email Scams:
The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is warning of fraudulent emails that appear to come from the FBI and US military. "The IC3 has increasingly received intelligence of fraudulent schemes misrepresenting the FBI and/or Director Robert S. Mueller III, the center said in an alert published on 17JUL. "The fraudulent emails give the appearance of legitimacy due to the usage of pictures of the FBI Director, seal, letterhead, and/or banners." The spam is actually pumping lotteries or are phony inheritance notifications, the IC3 said. Other scams use the FBI's name to "intimidate and convince the recipient the email is legitimate," the IC3 said. Criminals have used the agency's name in extortion emails and online auction scams as well.
In a separate statement also issued Tuesday, the IC3 warned that scammers were also sending out fraudulent email claiming to be from US soldiers stationed overseas. "The scam emails vary in content; however, the general theme of each is to request personal information and/or funds from the individual receiving the email," the IC3 siad. The emails are variations on long-running scams such as the Nigerian "419" spam, which has been "suprisingly effective at extracting large amounts of cash from victims.," said Adam O'Donnell, a senior research scientist at antispam vendor CloudMark.
(www.infoworld.com 17JUL07)