April 5, 2008
Millionaire Circle
It was close, but I am not going to be a millionaire after all.
My plan was to sell https.net on a recent Sedo auction for a million dollars. Am I kidding? Not! The place was right. I just did not do proper marketing campaign before the auction, like the pizza.com guys did. They sold their domain for $2,605,000.00. I got only $2,500.00 for my domain. Next time I am going to do a better job at marketing.
The first plan did not work, but all hope was not lost. Suddenly, yesterday I got another chance to be a millionaire. I received an email with a proposition to get $7,773,275.51 (50% of £7,800,000.00). All I need to do is to provide my name and a phone number to "Mr.Jason smith".
Note to the reader: All quoted text is shown exactly as it is written in the email.
You see, "Mr.Jason smith" is "the credit manager in a bank here in the United Kingdom." He writes:
"I am contacting you of a business transfer, of a huge sum of money from a deceased account. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that everything has been taken care off, and all will be well at the end of the day."
Well, I will not keep you guessing. This is kind of a typical Nigerian Phishing email. I usually do not get this kind of nonsense emails because my mail system puts it in a safe place where nobody can see it. This one got trough to my junk folder because it is full of errors. For your amusement below are forensic details of the millionaire offer.
Email was sent from IP 80.89.185.37 which is allocated to Cobranet Limited, with the physical address:
plot 8, Rafiu Babatunde Street, Lekki Phase I, Lagos, Nigeria.
Next, the Russian mail server mail.starlink.ru scanned it for content and added SPAM to the Subject line.
From and Reply to are different email addresses, probably false.
Below are partial headers (technical details) of the email.
From: Jason Smith <jason231smith@yahoo.gr>
Reply-to: Jason231smith@hotmail.com
Subject: [SPAM] Be our trusted contact
Received: from mx.starlink.ru ([77.50.1.3])
Received: from 80.89.185.37 ([80.89.185.37]) by mail.starlink.ru
End of story. I am not a millionaire. Back to the drawing board.
