DISTRICT ATTORNEY - NEW YORK COUNTY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 23, 2010

CONTACT: Erin Duggan
212-335-9400

DISTRICT ATTORNEY VANCE WARNS INDIVIDUALS TO BE ON HIGH ALERT FOR EMAIL SCAMS

The New York County District Attorney’s Office’s Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau has been alerted to an increase in scams involving unlawfully accessed email accounts from web-based email providers.

Potential victims report receiving an urgent email from an account known to them. The email includes an urgent plea for money, recounting a false claim that the email sender was traveling abroad, typically in London, and was mugged or robbed of all cash and property. The email further requests that funds to be wired via Western Union to help cover expenses during the interim period, with a promise to repay the loan. The same email is sent to nearly every email address listed in the sender’s address book.

This scam relies on the fact the potential victim will act swiftly because of the urgency of the message coming from a trusted source – often the account of a friend, relative, or colleague. This scam has multiple victims — the people who receive this email as well as the sender, whose email account is compromised and used for the scam. The perpetrators often gain unauthorized access to the email account used for the scam through an earlier “phishing” (identity theft) scam, whereby the email account holder is tricked into revealing his or her password information.

An email sent on April 23, 2010, which was referred to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, is indicative of the emails that are included in this type of scam. It is signed with the first name of the email account holder, and reads:

Because the perpetrators of this scam have access to all of the saved emails in the compromised email accounts, the perpetrator may learn a significant amount of personal information about the email account holders and be able to convince skeptical recipients of these emails that the perpetrator is, in fact, the actual friend, relative, or colleague associated with the email account.

Some recipients of these emails have reported that they have subsequently received additional emails requesting money from different email accounts in continuing efforts by the perpetrators to commit more fraud. Usually the email addresses are only slightly changed by one letter or one number.

These types of scams attempt to take advantage of the kindness of individuals, as well as the fact that the emails come from what appear to be “trusted” email accounts, as opposed to from strangers.

Although ongoing investigations into these and similar scams indicate that many of these perpetrators are based overseas and outside the reach of local law enforcement, District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. suggests some tips to avoid becoming a victim of this and similar email schemes:

If you suspect that your email account has been compromised, or you have been the victim of any other type of email fraud or scam, please contact the Internet Crime Complaint Center (“IC3”), a centralized, national complaint reporting database for Internet-related crimes. The IC3 is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National White Collar Crime Center, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

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New York County District Attorney | duggane@dany.nyc.gov | 212-335-9400