Invercargill City Councilor: Victim of Stranded Abroad Traveler’s Scam

Hackers' intervention in personal mail account victimized Invercargill, City Councilor (New Zealand), Graham Sycamore of later as reported by reported stuff.co.nz on September 5, 2011.

Masquerading Sycamore, hackers sent mails from his account to many of the contact persons enlisted in his mailing contacts stating him being penniless and stranded in Spain.

As hackers had already infiltrated his account, it was impossible for him to check the status of his account or go through the responses from his friends. On contrary, all the mail responses were diverted to the hackers.

Sycamore was surprised to receive calls from his acquaintances from different parts of Canada, London, Auckland, and Southland, who had already received his dodgy mails and were worried for him, reports stuff.co.nz on September 5, 2011.

The victimized on contrary was quite perplexed after his return from the overseas travel as he though that many of his friends might have been duped to pay money to the hackers.

However, Alan Dennis who was rather not convinced by the mail called back Sycamore to find the matter personally. Since the mail contained lots of grammatical mistakes, he was intuited that the writing was rather not from Sycamore, reports stuff.co.nz on September 5, 2011.

The scam that targeted Sycamore is known as stranded abroad traveler's scam and is a variation of the advance fee fraud explained security experts. These kinds of mails are generally based on a sympathy story that the victim is stranded abroad and is in need of quick cash for returning home.

Security experts however, recommend users to ignore and avoid such e-mails at the first instance. Further, experts also ask people to at least assert if the e-mails sound as if written by that known person or not. Furthermore, experts also hold the view that recipients of such mails can always call up the victimized and find out in-depth of the matter.

However, this trend of emotional torment is not the first case of mail intervention. During the recent past, in March 2011, Blair Aspiln, another resident of Invercargill was also victimized in a similar manner.

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» SPAMfighter News - 9/15/2011