Scam Email: Lesley Donna

Odds are that I, too, am going to receive scam emails directly to my email account, even as I spend so much of my time and energy trying to expose scammers. But scammers don't care - it's a numbers game to them... how many hundreds of thousands of emails can they send, what percentage of people reply thinking it's a real client, what percentage of them get funneled through the entire steps of the scam and actually send their good hard-earned money to a scammer... it's all about the numbers.

How did I know the below was a scam email? Well, I've been looking at these same "stories" for years and really they don't vary much. Also, lately scammers have been really annoying in when they set up their fake name, they've been picking two first names so that usually tells me it's likely a scam email to look at further. Then scammers do this other very odd thing... and they've done this for years - their name at the end of the email always seems to contain a period. In a place where a real person would NOT be putting a period. I don't know why scammers do this. I think they are just using some template and are too dumb to remove it. They also always have this international thing - their fake story either has them living internationally, moving to an international location or temporarily working or serving in the military in some foreign location. That will set up the later part of their scam story as to why you need to *wire* money to them. DON'T! Step away from the western union counter! Don't do it. For any reason. THAT is what the scammer is after. Not your paintings, not your widgets... they are after your cash. Do not accept overpayments and do NOT wire money to anyone for any reason. P.S. Any credit card they use will be stolen (and not always reported as such yet) so ask the scammer for the billing address on the credit card. Chances are the scammer will end the scam right there because they won't know the billing address. Or they may try to provide you a fake one. Call the credit card company and verify if the billing address is the same one as on file.

Okay, enough venting about these scum bags. Here is the scam email I just received.

Return-Path: [rahadmin@stjameswood.net]
From: Lesley Donna [lesley.donnashop@gmail.com]
Reply-To: lesley.donnashop@gmail.com
Subject: Interested in placing an order

Good Day,

    I am Lesley Donna from Norway, i want to inform you that your items are most creative & desirable, so much talent! I am interested in purchasing some of your artwork/items into my shop here in Norway, but before this is done, i want to inform that i will be making the payment with my Master card Detail because presently my best form of payment is via credit card.
  This is where i put all my money for any international transaction, so kindly reconfirm your website/contact details and get back to me with it so as to know if I'm right with the site.
  Concerning the shipment, my shipping company will be coming to pickup the items because i already have some merchandise with them in which they will be shipping together to me here in Norway, so you don't need to be worried about the shipment nor handling fee.

Lesley-DonnaShop
Brenneriveien 9 B,
0182 Oslo,
Norway.
Telephone: + 47 23 32 53 20
Telefax:   + 47 23 32 37 04
lesley.donnashop@gmail.com

Warmest Regards,
Lesley Donna.

Spam King could get 40 years for 27 million Facebook messages

Sanford Wallace has been around for a long time. Ever since I can remember anyone talking about spam. And I've been involved in the internet since the days of Usenet (curses, that'll date me somewhat). He seems to keep at it, no matter what is thrown at him.

There are really so few cases where the authorities actually pursue spammers, so I thought I'd post this. But I wonder if it's more about that Sanford seems to continue to insist on living in the United States. He'd probably be pretty untouchable if he chose a more remote location. And also the authorities maybe wanting us to believe they are actually trying to pursue the massive problem of spamming. Ole' Sanford will be back.

A Las Vegas man accused of sending more than 27 million spam messages to Facebook users faces federal fraud and computer tampering charges that could send him to prison for more than 40 years, according to a grand jury indictment.

Sanford Wallace, the self-proclaimed "Spam King," pleaded not guilty during an initial court appearance Thursday after being indicted July 6 on six counts of electronic mail fraud, three counts of intentional damage to a protected computer and two counts of criminal contempt.

The indictment filed in San Jose federal court said Wallace compromised about 500,000 Facebook accounts between November 2008 and March 2009 by sending massive amounts of spam through the company's servers on three separate occasions.

Wallace would collect Facebook user account information by sending "phishing" messages that tricked users of the social networking site into providing their passwords, the indictment said.

He would then use that information to log into their accounts and post spam messages on their friends' Facebook walls, the indictment said. Those who clicked on the link, thinking it came from their friend, were redirected to websites that paid Wallace for the Internet traffic.