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Phishing Scam Uses Hospice Chairman’s Identity

An e-mail scam has recently attempted to capitalize on the popularity of 'Roger Clausen' Chairman of a New Zealand-based healthcare institute 'Arohanui Hospice' that offers medicinal help to patients suffering from advanced cancer.

Adrian Broad, Chief Executive Officer, who was shocked at the incident, said that Roger never sought any re-imbursement of expenses he incurred in anything he did, rather handed over every amount of money he raised to the health center for the treatment of the center's patients, as reported by Stuff on August 14, 2009.

The fraudulent e-mail, supposedly dispatched from the Hotmail account of Clausen, said that Mr. Clausen had lost his wallet on the tour of England and therefore immediately required $2,500 to pay hotel bills and his return fare to home.

Nevertheless, a close friend of Mr. Clausen who received the e-mail alerted him that the message was a fake after he had noticed the punctuation mistakes in it.

It was hard for Mr. Clausen to believe that e-mail scammers were using his name to lure others, i.e. his allies to pay money that actually would land into the phishers' hands.

Consequently, Mr. Clausen sought help from police and also cautioned all his other friends who might have got the phishing e-mail not to respond.

In the meantime, this type of online fraud i.e. exploiting some reputed person's identity to phish off money from that person's acquaintances is not entirely new. Indeed, it is simply another scam that Nigerian scammers mostly use for tricking unsuspecting victims, state security officials.

The officials further say that Nigerian fraudsters succeed by convincing their victims to do what they direct by narrating tales that often sound so true that the scam e-mails' recipients can hardly ignore the messages.

The officials also add that the current Internet scam is spreading widely and the perpetrators could be based in any part of the world that could create difficulties in resolving the case. Consequently, Police have suggested that anyone who receives such an e-mail should find out its source and confirm about its content and not blindly believe what it says.

Related article: Phishing With A Redirector Code

» SPAMfighter News - 9/2/2009

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