Jim Walsh

Some years ago I was receiving at least 100 scam emails every week. I never realised that there were so many millionaire orphans, widows of dictators or families of army generals and public officials who had so much money to share.

Just today the Federal Reserve Bank in New York emailed me to ask for my bank details so that they can transfer $10.5m inheritance fund to me. As confirmation of its legitimacy there is a note from the FBI attached to the email.

Some years ago I decided that it would be interesting to calculate how much I would be worth if all these emails were legitimate and I received the money that I was promised. So I opened a file and began printing each email. As you can imagine the file grew quickly and despite my best intention I never got around to adding up my imagined fortune.  At a rough guess I would probably have received enough to bail out the US today and have its credit rating restored.

I consider myself pretty much scam proof. I have resisted investing in many variations on the scenarios outlined above. I have resisted buying Viagra, cures for ED and becoming friends with lonely Russian girls. I even found a way to silence those scammers who call you at home offering a free inspection of your PC.  Here’s a tip if you receive such a call. Tell the caller that you have an Apple Mac, not a PC.  Believe me you’ll never hear a phone dropped so fast.

So why do I even consider that scammers may be good communicators. Well they must be to catch some people. If they didn’t have the occasional success they would not write such tear-jerking or I-don’t–know-you-but-you- seem–to-be-an honest-person, emails. And secondly I almost got caught this week with a totally new approach. An email from a company purporting to act for a hotel, which had over-charged my account and wished to refund me $1100. As it happened I have stayed in about six hotels in the past few months and immediately thought one of them had genuinely added too much to my credit card payment. It was only when the name of the hotel was given as the Hotel Waikiki that the penny dropped.

When it comes to unsolicited emails or telephone calls the old adage is very true. “If it looks or sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. No matter how well it is communicated.