Mahargdom

I’m sure we’ve all gotten 100 emails from the Prince of the Sudan or the Sultan of Cambodia or the Duke of Zaire — most of which don’t exist and all of which are email scams. They send very long “most honorable” requests for assistance transferring money or some such. Now this email con has come to Austin and has mutated into a much more believable and dangerous form.

Most everyone knows not to reply to these emails and many people think “Who would be dumb enough to send someone like that money??” What most people don’t know is that the scam is quite clever because they King of Morocco actual sends YOU money, not the other way around.

A version of this scam showed up in Austin and nearly took a Masters student for $2,000 as reported by KEYE. The scam works as follows: The con artist tells you they need help moving money or they offer to pay you up front of a service. They write you a check or send you money that shows up in your bank account. You (the sucker) check your bank and sure enough…there’s $10,000 dollars in there that they sent!! Sweet! You just got a nice chunk of change! Let’s say that your bank balance is now $15,000 ($5,000 of your money and $10,000 newly transferred dollars). The next email or communication will say “Oops, I made a mistake and only mean to send $5,000 to you, the other $5,000 was for someone else (or for my son or for this other account in America.) Can you please send $5,000 of the money I sent to you to Account #X?” You’ve already got the $10,000, so what do you have to lose…right? Well, you transfer the $5,000 to account X taking your balance down to $10,000. A couple days later, the original money transfer/check that the con artist sent bounces. The bank pulls the $10,000 from the bounced check out of your account and you are left with …. ? NOTHING! Well done.

I’ve heard a lot of people misrepresent this scam, so I thought it would be worth walking through and the recent article puts a new twist on it. A much better twist in my opinion, in the form of a local tutoring fee. This seems much more likely to con someone than the Prime Minister of Ethiopa.