Talking of scam warnings, this was published on another forum by one of the members today:
Many of us will have received a scam email that starts with the scammer introducing themselves, often alleging to be an official of a government or a company.
The email then says there is a large amount of money which they are willing to transfer to you. The reasons can be they have found you are a long lost relative of a person who has died, or they themselves are prevented from taking money out of their country because of the political climate and they want your help to do so.
Mrs T has just received a scam of this type.
The differences are she did not receive the scam by email, but by letter and it was addressed to her by name, both first and last name.
The alleged address of the sender, as shown on the letter, is in Kowloon, but the letter was posted in the UK. The only thing I can read from the postmark is it says, āRoyal Mail Home Counties Northā.
The scam type is that someone, who has no next of kin, has died(in an earthquake in 2009) and the scammer is proposing the transfer the funds to Mrs T because her surname is the same as that of the deceased person.
The interesting thing is the full name of the ādeceasedā person is the same as our son.
Clearly it is a scam but interesting that it arrived by letter, is allegedly from Kowloon but was posted in the UK, addresses Mrs T by name and includes the name of our son.
I used Google street maps and Google to look at the address in Kowloon and it appears to a block where offices can be rented.
Getting the full name and address is probably not that difficult but to be able to use the name of our son appears virtually impossible. It could be a coincidence but the chances of guessing the first name of our son seems very low.
It seems the names and addresses used came from the electoral register - easy to access and providing real data - and which lent a touch of credibility to an otherwise unlikely story.
