In a way, no. Like when you go to Wikipedia, it’ll be en.wikipedia.org - Wikipedia is the domain, en. is the subdomain for their English language version. Used to see it a lot in the early days of mobile websites, m.website.com or something like that. Once you’ve registered your website scams4all.com at some hoster or other, could be based anywhere in the world, just tell them you want them to host a subdomain called royalmail.scams4all web domains work the same way as postal addresses, they go backwards. when you deliver a letter first you establish the country to send it to, then the city, then the street, then the door number. People are just used to seeing one word or name on a website so if you see royalmail at the start of the address it looks official enough to trick you into a false sense of security
Most people trust the data provided by companies house for registering U.K. companies, however it seems all you need to ‘create’ a new Ltd company is a name, address and DOB with no documentation. Someone set up a company last year in my wife’s name as the sole director with a business address in Tilbury. We reported it to companies house who claim they don’t police this since they are just a depository for the data and recommended reporting it to Action Fraud, who didn’t care either since they claim no crime has been committed yet! The upshot is that we found out the name of the online formation company the scammers used (from companies house) and asked them to remove / close down the company. It takes 3 days to create a new company using a formation company and yet we are still waiting for the company to be closed since applying last April ... worth checking if your name is being used via the search feature since there are apparently thousands of fake companies listed, presumably used for money laundering and taking out fraudulent loans https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/search/officers?q=
If you want to be kept up to date with the latest scams and how to avoid them check out Jim Browning’s videos on YouTube Here’s a good one of his on Gmail tech support scam ...
...and did you report the incident to royal-mail, or your email provider. So they can block future individuals from recieveing said scam email?!?!?
Thought someone might like to have some fun with this email which I received today from [email protected] My Beloved in Christ, Permit me to share with you, my desire to go into Godly business partnership with you. I got your profound contact email from a computerized data, following my fasting & praying effort searching for a reliable and trustworthy person to assist me in this venture. I am Mrs. Maureen Greaves, married to Late Alan Greaves (PhD} who worked with ( Total S.A.) the French Multinational Integrated Oil and Gas Company and one of the five "Super major" oil companies in the world as their Africa drilling rig supplier for 17 years before his death On Christmas Eve 2013. Before his death we were both devout born again Christian; lay-preacher and former social worker and my late husband Alan Greaves; was an organist at the church for 40 years, before his was attacked and beaten with a pickaxes on his way to play at Midnight Mass at St Saviour's Church in Sheffield and he died in hospital three days later as you can confirm this link as stated below: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2529286/A-year-murder-organists-widow-breaks-vigil.html A year after his murder, organist Alan Graves' widow ... www.dailymail.co.uk The widow of a church organist fatally injured on Christmas Eve last year played a leading role in an emotional candlelit service at the spot where he was attacked ... http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-25417344 When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of ($15.5M) with a bank in Cotonou Benin where he worked for 17 years last as the (TotalS.A.) Africa drilling rig supplier. I am contacting you because of the recent report from my Doctor told me that I have some weeks to live due to cardiac and kidney failure problem, having known my condition, I seek your concept and permission to present you to the bank as as my late husband foreign investors to retrieve the fund and utilize for establishing an orphanages home for the poor and needy, and also propagating the word of God and to endeavor that the house of God is maintained. I shall give you the full detailed documents of the fund as soon as I hear from you. Any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another good person for this same purpose. Hoping to receive your response immediately. Thanks and Remain blessed in the Lord. I Remain your sister in Christ. Mrs. Maureen A. Greaves (Church Army evangelist).
As a barrister who used to mainly do criminal work, I can confirm that some people do (or at least used to) fall for these scams. I’ve been involved in numerous email fraud (aka “419”) cases where victims were taken for large amounts of money in some quite mind-boggling circumstances. One case in particular from c.2011 springs to mind because as part of the the (UK based) scammers’ tactic of stringing the (American and Canadian) victims along by giving excuses why the (non-existent) money was held up in transit or the victims needed to transfer a fee, they sent them a questionnaire form so they could apply for a certificate of EU money laundering compliance (all totally bogus, obvs). The form had all sorts of questions that you would expect such as, "Are you or have you ever been a member of any of the following organisations - PIRA, PLO, ETA..." But then, oddly, it also went on to list “Take That” and "Westlife.” Another question was “Have you ever owned or had possession of any of the following weaponry? Submachine gun. Hand grenade. Land mines” and then …”Thermonuclear Mingemuncher”. But the absolute piece de resistance was the final wrap up question on the form, which was "Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?" In response to which, and this is no BS, the victim had scribbled in biro “I don't know" So yeah, there really is one born every minute. It’s a numbers game for these guys because perhaps only one person in a million would fall for this kind of nonsense, but if you send out 5 million emails….. IIRC, in that case the police over here and the FBI over there identified over a dozen victims, but only 4 were prepared to cooperate with a prosecution, and almost $1.5m had passed through one defendant’s bank account.
Can someone, cleverer and more articulate than I, please get this guy(Maureen, sorry!) to ring Lenny? And, obvs, record it for a laugh?
Here's your very own deluxe guide to Nigerian Prince/ Princess letters. If you read it please send me your bank details so that I can send you your prize money... https://www.verified.org/articles/scams/nigerian-prince-scam BTW its fun to reply and string them along for a few days or even weeks, so they get their hopes up. Then let them down with a really insulting message.
My fave is the one involving the Nigerian astronaut trapped on the International Space Station since the collapse of the Soviet Union
Fun fact: Nigeria has 200+ million people, including 2,000 ethnicities. There is no official Royal family nor Prince/ Princesses. But there appears to be hundreds of unofficial Princes spread throughout the world.
Bad idea. By doing that you’re confirming that your email address is active and you may well get filtered onto a “sucker list” for further targeting by way of other scams such as phishing, ransomware, fake invoice, embedded malware and Amazon delivery fraud etc.
Its possible I guess. But its soooo fun! Especially when the Prince then writes again to complain and insist his cock is bigger than a gnats tongue. I really wish I'd kept those emails looking back! LOL
Most of these guys aren’t semi-comedic freelancers, but are linked to organised crime gangs involving some really nasty people who I would prefer not to have my email or IP address.
Bah! They already have your email address as you've received their message. Using a VPN is simple enough too. Besides f*ck them. I wouldn't tell some headbanger, criminal pond scum to their face that they are little dicked toe rags, whose mother was a whore -for obvious reasons. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be told it when I am virtually (see what I did there?) free and clear. I'm not afraid when there's no reason to be. EDIT: If there are any angry Nigerian Princes on this forum who received a message like the one above, it wasn't me!
Yep, I knew someone who had £40k creamed off his savings. He did some digging and found the culprits. He then received word to back off. Which he did. His bank eventually reimbursed him but Christ, it was long winded….
This morning I had scam telephone calls at 7am and 7.30am concerning fictional deliveries.Although they are pretty transparent to many of us thousands of people are caught out by these criminals.
It’s a perpetual conveyor belt of scams now. I overheard my wife on the phone, I asked her who it was as she was droning on a bit… ‘the bank’ she whispered… I said ‘did you phone them or did they phone you’? ‘They phoned me’ I said ‘hang up’ which she did but it was too late.
