7 February 2011
Geologist scam
Posted by Callan Bentley
I just got an e-mail which screams “scam!”
Apologies for having to reach out to you like this, but I made a quick trip to the UK and had my bag stolen from me with my passport and credit cards in it. The embassy has cooperated by issuing a temporary passport, I just have to pay for a ticket and settle
Hotel bills.To be honest,i don’t have money with me,I’ve made contact with my bank but the best they could do was to send me a new card in the mail which will take 2-4 working days to arrive here.i was thinking of asking you to lend me some quick funds that i can give back as soon as i am out of here,i really need to make a last minute flight.
I can furnish you with info on how you will get me the money. You can reach me via hotel’s desk phone, the number is, +44 1224 722381.
Thanks,
[redacted]
I have removed the name of the “sender” because I don’t think it’s really the sender. The name given was of a geologist from a Florida university and I suspect it was copied wholesale off of his website. The source address was not the university e-mail, but a gmail account.
It appears to be a new(?) flavor of scam where the scammer pretends to be a geologist and reaches out to another geologist for money. The tip off for me? I’ve never met or heard of this particular geologist before. Professional courtesy is one thing, but this scammer’s approach is apparently shot-gun like, trying to find a professional connection by getting at least one email through to someone who knows the geologist whose identity has been stolen.
I trust most geologists are savvy enough to sniff out the fake — but just in case, I figured I should post a note here. Anyone else getting emails like this one?
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.
Alas, this is a common scam. It usually comes from Facebook hijacks – the scammer resets the password so that the user can’t get on, then gets contact details for relatives and emails them to say “Hi I’m stuck in X and can’t reach home, can you send some money?” It’s especially insidious in Internet cafes where the machines may have keyloggers on them, and where people who actually *are* travelling may have logged on.
It’s a sad variation of the “family member in distress” scam – http://www.snopes.com/fraud/distress/family.asp
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Chris Rowan and Dana Hunter, Callan Bentley. Callan Bentley said: Someone is attempting to scam geologists http://bit.ly/gVZs7O […]
It’s a standard scam – I’ve gotten it from relatives and colleagues, none of them geologists.
Haven’t seen it recently, but I seem to remember getting one of these a few months back. No one I knew, of course, and it was sent to my blog email (a sure tip-off, since I don’t give that one out to friends).
Same thing was run a couple of years ago using a volcanologist’s info. Small snag: had him trapped in a west African country with no volcanoes.
@ Richard Kerr:
Heh. If you’re going to scam geologists, you’ve got to get the geology right (or at least plausible).
And yet another I received the day after that other one I just posted. You can see the common thread:
Apologies for having to reach out to you like this, but we made a quick trip to London,United Kingdom and had my bag stolen from me with my passport and credit cards in it. The embassy is willing to help by letting us fly without my passport, I just have to pay for a ticket and settle Hotel bills. Unfortunately for me, I can’t have access to funds without my credit card, I’ve made contact with our
banks but they need more time to come up with a new one. I was thinking of asking you to lend me some quick funds that I can give back as soon as I get in. I really need to be on the next available flight.
I can forward you details on how you can get the funds to me. You can reach me via hotel’s desk phone, the number is +447045749898
I hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks,
YYYYYYYYYYY