Beware the scammers’ crocodile tears!

Having realized that users are getting wise to their scams involving unclaimed inheritances of multi-millionaire African princes, so-called Nigerian scammers have resorted to other outlandish stories from their arsenal of social engineering. We recently caught a few messages in our traps that suggest the scammers are not only unscrupulous and greedy but also engage in self-irony.

In particular, we detected some mailings supposedly sent by the FBI and its agents. The messages state that in the course of a large-scale investigation they identified users who had fallen victim to spammers, fake “Nigerian brides”, the organizers of non-existent lotteries, and bogus lawyers of deceased millionaires. The recipient of the “FBI” message was listed as a victim, and he/she could now receive compensation for any losses. The next step in the scam is most likely to be a request to send a payment to cover the costs of processing the compensation request, such as filling in all the necessary documentation. In other words, it uses the typical Nigerian scam scenario.

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