The other day, I received a scam email.
Well, let’s face it, I receive scam emails every day.
But just for fun, I decided to reply to this particular email — a practice known as scambaiting
— where I pretend to be an innocent victim in order to waste the scammer’s time and
resources.
This particular email was sent from a one Michael J. Weirsky.
It read,
“My name is Michael J. Weirsky, I'm an unemployed Handy man, winner of $273 million Jackpot
in March 8, 2019.
I donate $1.000.000,00 to you.
Contact me via email for info / claim.
Continue reading at .”
Obviously, the first clue to it being a scam is the “too good to be true” $1 million
that he wishes to donate to me, but also the poor grammar and punctuation is a dead giveaway.
“Michael” also provided me with some evidence of his winnings by providing a link to a news
article (remembering, that you should never click on a link from an unknown sender).
However, this link was just to an ABC news article showing that Michael J. Weirsky is
indeed a real unemployed handyman who struck it lucky in the New Jersey Lottery.
Unable to contain my enthusiasm, I replied with a simple one-line email,
“Wow, that's wonderful news!
How do I claim the $1 million?”
12 minutes later, Michael replied with a wall of text (obviously a cut-and-paste job) reiterating
that he is indeed an unemployed handyman, and provided me with further links to click
on as evidence of his recent, massive windfall (none of which I clicked on, of course).
In it, he wrote,
“You are very lucky also to be a beneficiary of $1,000,000.00.
To facilitate the payment of funds ($1,000,000.00) donated exclusively to you, send me the information
below (I've asked this brief information just to know who we are donating.
I do not want to ask you about your ID because we do not want to leave an impression in your
mind that I want to steal your identity).”
Thank you Michael.
That’s very reassuring.
I don’t want anybody stealing my identity either.
He listed some basic information that he required to help facilitate the donation, and then
went on to explain the reasoning behind the rather large donation.
He wrote,
“We donate to reduce the level of poverty in your area and to improve the standard of
living for as many people as possible, because it is the only purpose to donate this money
to you.”
How nice of him!
Anyway, I replied,
“Hi Michael, Thank you for not asking for my ID.
There are too many scammers about!
Please note that my job requires me to spend a lot of time at geographical worksites throughout
Western Australia, so often I have little to no mobile phone signal.
If we could please use email as our primary form of communication, that would be great.”
I then went on to provide some fake details.
As my email account is named NihongoMan, that is, JapaneseMan, I decided to use the identity
of Toni Collette’s fictional character, Sandy Edwards, from the Australian romantic
drama film, Japanese Story.
She’s a director of a company that designs geological software in Western Australia.
The phone number is completely fake.
Bullfinch is a real town in WA, but the address is not real.
I approximated the date of birth of the character and made her male instead of female.
I said that I am divorced (which is important for later) and that I am a Geological Software
Designer/Tester (a good ruse to explain why I’m often in areas where I can’t answer
my mobile phone — not that they’d try to be ringing me I don’t think).
Again, Michael replied with another wall of text.
This time, he wrote that my “email address was one of the few lucky email addresses randomly
selected from Google, European Email Database”.
He also added another reason for the generous donation saying, “As I wish to donate part
of my lottery winning in honor of my late Father, Williams Wanczyk, who died in an accident
year 2016”.
Yes, Accident Year 2016 was certainly a terrible year.
“I have already informed my personal banker (Mr. Heinrich Karl)”.
And just in case I had any doubts, he wrote, “Please be rest assured, that this is 100%
legitimate visit this web-page below for confirmation”.
Again, some links to some real news articles.
Anyway, blah, blah, blah, “I have decided to put this away from the media and my sole
purpose of doing this was a result of a long talk with my children who has always advised
me to donate to strangers”.
Thanks kids!
But wait, something special just happened.
“I am presently in Dominican Republic overseeing my summer donation projects and an amazing
incident happened this morning, I received an email from one of the beneficiaries who
lives in Canada, Mr. Elke Kinmayer thanking me and children for the donation fund we gave
him and his family”.
Oh, how nice.
That truly is amazing.
“Mr. Elke Kinmayer told us that he got his own funds, but initially when he received
the notification from us, he was a little bit anxious as a result of various scams that
are going on in the internet today, but he decided to trust us and he followed the bank
instructions and made the quick processing and release of the donation to him”.
It’s great to know that somebody else actually received these funds, because I was starting
to get a little bit worried.
He goes on to say how I can claim the donation from the bank telling me to “email this
donation code, your full name, postal address and telephone number for easy tracking of
your file to my donation supervisor at the bank over in Texas, United States”.
Sounds easy.
He gave me details of a real bank in North Carolina (I thought this was supposed to be
in Texas!?).
The address is real, the email is fake, and the phone number is Canadian as far as I can
tell.
Anyway, he said that “Your donation will take less than 3 days to get to you if only
you follow the instructions of the bank”.
“Please note that you should please notify us once you have received your donation money
from the bank.
So we can close your donation file and continue with the next beneficiary”.
You’d think they’d be able to work on more than one file at a time.
“God bless You.
Sincerely, Mr. Michael J. Weirsky.
Greetings to you.”.
Wow, “God bless you” and “Greetings to you”.
He’s very polite.
I replied later that evening,
“Dear SunTrust Bank staff, Mr. Michael J. Weirsky has informed me that he has deposited
a donation of $1,000,000 into his Trust Fund Account with SunTrust Bank that I am eligible
to receive.
He said that I must provide the following details”.
To make things a little bit interesting, I changed some of the details from my original
message.
My name changed to Cindy Edwards (from Sandy Edwards).
I changed my address to Encampment 7 (from Encampment 3), and I used a different fake
mobile phone number.
Surely a bank must know if I have provided the correct details or not?
The next day, I received a reply from a one Heinrich Karl (Remember him?
The personal banker of Mr. Weirsky).
He told me that “Before releasing these funds to you, you must obtain a signed affidavit
of claim to donation from the district attorney's office here in the US”.
“Contact Attorney Clarence Carter at the District Attorney's office via this Email”.
The only Clarence Carter that came up in a Google search was an American blues and soul
singer who’s 83 years old.
I don’t think he’s also an attorney.
To be fair to the scammers, however, searching for a lawyer named Clarence Carter revealed
the actual Clarence Carter they are impersonating.
So I sent the fake Mr Carter an email.
“Dear Attorney Clarence Carter, Heinrich Karl, a Bank Consultant/Representative at
SunTrust Bank, has asked me to contact you in order to "receive a signed affidavit of
claim to a donation from USA".
Could you please provide this affidavit?
I must note that I am not in the USA (I am in the outback of Australia), so I cannot
physically sign anything if that's what you need.
But I'm sure with today's technology, there's other ways we can proceed.
Thank you for your time.
Regards, Cindy Edwards”
I soon got a reply from a California-based law firm from Clarence stating,
“Good day Cindy Edwards, I received your email and also received a notification and
confirmation from SunTrust that you were sent to me for an "affidavit of claim" to a $1,000,000.00
donation sum.
The below information are required from you so i can proceed with the processing of the
legal documents to avoid problems from you banks or even your government once the funds
hits your account.”
He required all the normal details, but one piece of information really stood out.
A copy of my ID.
Well, that simply wasn’t gong to happen, and I’m not prepared to make a fake ID,
so I decided to mix things up a little.
“Dear Clarence, I'm so sorry...
It seems my ex-wife has gained access to my email account while I've been out working
in the desert.
My name is not Cindy Edwards... it is Sandy Edwards.
She lives near me and I can see that she has sent some false information to you.
Can you please confirm that it is indeed me who is entitled to the $1 million donation?
Regards, Sandy Edwards”
An hour or so later, Attorney Carter replied with a very brusque email.
“Provide a copy of your ID to confirm”.
No “Good day”, no “Regards”, no “God bless you”.
He clearly wants my ID.
I replied,
“I'm so sorry Attorney Carter, You're not going to believe this.
While I was out on a geological expedition, it seems that I have misplaced my ID.
Western Australia is quite vast (it's more than 2.6 million square km!), so I'm sure
you can understand that I probably won't be able to find it.
I can drive into Perth in a couple of months time to order a new one, but then there's
also the waiting time to get the card sent out to me.
I guess it will take about 60 to 90 days in total.
Is there any other way that I can get the $1 million donation that I am entitled to?
I am a bit desperate at the moment as I am still settling the divorce proceedings.
Kind regards and apologies again, Sandy Edwards”
I waited till the afternoon, but no reply.
So I decided to contact Heinrich from the bank again.
“Dear Heinrich, Unfortunately, Attorney Carter will not give me an affidavit without
me providing an ID card.
However, as I told him, I don't have an ID card at the moment as I lost it on a recent
work trip.
I will apply for a new one as soon as I can, but it may take some time (possibly a couple
of months as I live very far away from the nearest city).
Is there any other way that you can release the funds to me?
Kind regards, Sandy Edwards”
Heinrich replied,
“Provide a copy of your passport to him because he need to verify everything so they
can prepare the documentations required before the funds can be transferred to you.”
I decided to download a sample passport from the Australia Government’s USI website,
add a bit of shadow, and unfocus it a little.
Playing a bit dumb, I attached it to my reply and wrote,
“Dear Clarence, Heinrich Karl from SunTrust Bank told me that I can use a passport for
identification.
Sorry, I thought you wanted a driver's licence.
Anyway, I've taken a photo of my passport using my mobile phone and uploaded it to this
email.
Let me know if you need anything else.
Regards, Sandy Edwards”
Heinrich replied,
“Please make it very clear because it is blurred.”
I decided to test their patience just a little bit more and gave them one more crappy photo
of my passport.
I also pushed them about the money.
I wrote,
“Sorry, it looked fine on my phone.
Maybe your computer has a problem?
Anyway, I took another picture of it, this time using the flash.
Once you have this photo, will you deposit the money into my account?
How will you pay me?”
Heinrich replied,
“Please provide something clearer.”
I was getting a bit tired of dealing with these scammers.
They weren’t even asking for money!
So I followed Heinrich’s advice and sent him something a bit clearer.
“Sorry Heinrich (and Clarence and Michael), I've attached something much clearer this
time that even you will understand.
I've checked with SunTrust Bank and Heinrich Karl doesn't even exist.
You said the bank was in Texas, but you gave me an address in North Carolina, and a Canadian
phone number.
When my "wife" sent her details instead, you didn't even notice.
You should probably quit scamming and find an honest job instead.
You certainly aren't very good at scamming.”
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t receive a reply.
I reported the phishing and moved on to my next scambaiting target.
Anyway, that was my first attempt at scambaiting.
I hope you’ve enjoyed watching.
I had quite a lot of fun during the process, but would have enjoyed it more if the scammers
showed a bit more frustration and anger.
I guess they only had one goal — to get my ID.
If they can’t get it, they just move on to their next victim.
Oh well.
Maybe in my next scambaiting attempt I will play dumb a little bit more and really get
under their skin.
Thanks for watching.