Viewing topic: 419 scam via Visarus

I received the following as a message alert from Visarus

From: kingsley willson (add to contacts)
Date: Wed 28th Feb 2007, 10:36AM
Subject: From: kingsley willson
Message: From: kingsley willson
Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire


Please reply me through willsonking002yahoo.fr


Dear One,

I am kingsley willson., the only son of late Mr, Alfred willson a suspected rebel suponsor in bouake west cost of cote d i'voire by the government.I discoverd that my father deposited the sum of the sum of (10;500 000) Ten million five hundred thausand Million USA dollar in a security firm here in Abidjan ,and now i am in hiding in one of the city in Abidjan called Yopougoun .
Due to infertility nature of my country politicaly,


I wish to invest this money In your country. I also plead you help me on the investment part of the business, You have a free hand of operation.
I will like you to send to me your telephone so that i will discuss with you in person so that i will send the name of the security firm to open contact with them for withdrawl of the consignment to move it to your country for investment.
.
The money is in the position of a security company as a family tresure. A legal process will take place to ensure mutual transfer. .
All effort made to the successful of this transaction will highly be appreciated. I hope to get a favourable reply in due curse.
We can negotiate on the terms of assistance.

Best regards,
kingsley willson,

Please reply me through willsonking002yahoo.fr

There are enough Nigerian type scams floating around without having them forwarded from Visarus

They still keep getting through the net. I can tighten up the spam filter that takes out certain word combinations, but that might block legit messages.

A new version of the spam/scam filter is on the drawing board - in the meantime, I'm thinking of mailbombing any that get through...

Thanks for bringing that to my attention Bartley - in case anyone out there is not familiar with scams, don't reply to these email addresses, even to hurl abuse or wind them up. If you want to do that, register a sacrificial email address first!

Another variation of the old scam!!

Yep, crude and stupid. However, the fact that people still obviously spend vast amounts of time searching out obscure little sites like VisaRus suggests that they're actually getting something out of it.

Bizarre...

After March 8th I plan to have another brainstorming session with some programmer friends and improve on the filtering process. At best, the system can just 'freeze' a new user's account if it looks like they're spamming.

The funny thing is that I only just now realized that I had two PM's from that same scammer waiting for me to open in my mail box since Feb. 28. I guess I'll have to pay more attention to my message alerts.