Spam or not?

I received this unexpected email today

"Am Fred Thompson , a Military Engineer stationed in Iraq. I need your assistance. Feel free to email me at : capt.fredtom@fred-construction.com
Will let you know in details once i hear from you.Fred"

I couldn't access fred-construction.com and my email failed.
A google Search wasn't very helpful.
Can anyone out there assist me with more info?

Bazza

 

Likely something fishy.

http://db.aa419.org/fakebanksview.php?key=57531

Legitimate U.S. Government Military Engineers always have an email contact address via the branch of the service they are in.

 

If it feels like spam, it probably is.

Can you check the full headers of the email for the originating IP? It feels like it's probably Nigerian.

 

Thanks guys.:major
I'll check out my email again and see if there is any follow up email/s

Bazza

 

Emails keep on coming back as "undeliverable" so I will forget about this unless something usable occurs later on.

Bazza

 

If he gets back to you. He might want your bank account #, password, S/S #, mothers last name, have his contac send you a check for more than the ammount he needs and you can keep the rest for your troubles.

 

^^ Something like this ^^
The Iraq scam spam has been around for a while, do you remember when they said they found container loads of gold in Iraq, I think there was even a movie made about it.
Fact or fiction? I don't now but these emails claimed to have a gazillion dollars worth of gold and they needed somewhere to transfer the money to when they sold it. You get to keep half.
Just supply your bank account details for the transfer and credit card details so they can check that you are really you.
They would sometimes add the sympathy clause like,
"My brother had his legs blown off by a roadside bomb and the military won't cover his expenses forever so I will have to support and take care of him"

Since the Osama Bin Laden death is such big news I would guess there will probably be a surge in this type of scam spam but supposedly from Afghanistan. Something like,
"While looking for associates of Osama Bin Laden we found a gazillion dollars worth of gold in a cave in Afghanistan etc etc"

You can see a few examples of these scam spams @
http://shellgames.weebly.com/military.html

 

Thanks David, I only emailled back because it wasn't the usual "419" type scam, quoting dead relatives, lots of money in a dodgy bank, etc.

What confused me was the "undeliverable address" .
Why would any scammer quote an email address that was "undeliverable" ?
Maybe to check if my email address was active, I guess, but being "undeliverable" wouldn't work anyhow. :confused

All info to keep in mind, for any future attempts.
BTW, a great site quoted by the OP, about US Army scans.

I hadn't come across those before. Well worth reading by anyone else reading this thread. :cool

Bazza

 

My guess is that this scam spam has been reported, investigated and now the address has been blocked by your email provider and probably all other email providers as well.

Just out of interest, was the email address that the email was sent from the same as the email address the scammer put in his email?
In other words, could you just Reply to the email or was the scammer asking you to use a different email to reply?

 

Hi bigbazza,

Let's simplify things to make it easier to determine spam emails in the future.

"Spam", by definition, is ANY email that wasn't welcomed by you. Criteria for "welcomed" email includes the following:

Giving your email address to a friend or family member. (Or someone you know giving your email address to a mutual acquaintence.)

Emailing someone (the reply would be "welcomed" by you, as you sent them an email in the first place).

Knowningly subscribing to an email list (on Facebook, a website, a newsgroup, etc.).


ANY email you receive that wasn't welcomed/requested by you is SPAM, period.

Let's also remember the purposes of spam:

Phishing attacks (tricking you into giving information on a website that APPEARS to be legitimate, but isn't).

Getting you to purchase something, but usually on a site that doesn't have encryption or legitimate business practices.

Simply getting a response from you, which can do a few things: if they get enough email activity, it can bog down the email servers... for some reason some people enjoy doing negative things like this, and also once you reply to a spam email, it lets them know your email address is legitimate, and usually your email gets added to many more spam lists. This INCLUDES clicking "unsubscribe" links in spam emails... NEVER click them, it just spreads your email to more lists.

 

Thanks mcsmc and Mad Mal, for your replies. Sorry for not responding earlier but I have not been on the Net for a few days.

I am aware of most of the pointers to email scams. Because of my past employment, I thought that maybe this email may relate to that. I did check out by searching with Google, but was not aware of "US Army scams" at the time.

I will check out the email addresses and get back to you.

Thanks again,

Bazza

 

Here's a useful page for trying to find the originating IP for an email. It won't help if the sender was behind a VPN or proxy though.

 

So much to learn, so little time. :-D I'll print it out.

Bazza

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