E-MAIL SCAM ~ “Iraqi re-construction effort”

This is a new one… Someone with an Arabic name is sending e-mails on behalf of the “Iraqi re-construction effort” and “PM Al-maliki regime” to solicit “your co-operation in a multi million dollars worth of contracts to supplies on various goods /construction…”

Notice the bad English. Usually these scam letters contain grammatical or stylistic errors since they are copied many times over before being sent out, sometimes by scam artists who can barely read or understand English. Random errors made during such replications inevitably multiply over so many copy-and-paste cycles.

All scam letters claim they are trying to give you money (and millions of dollars at that) if only you would “cooperate”… And the kind of “cooperation” they have in mind requires you (eventually) turning over all your bank account information to parties you don’t even know!

But the first letter is always a “warm-up letter” asking only for your “direct telephone numbers and exclusive e-mail and a scanned attachment of your well articulated tender/products and prices.”

And once you do that and prove to them that you will follow orders like a sheep, you will be demanded in a subsequent letter to turn over your bank information as well so that they can “transfer” your “fee” in return for your “indispensable services…” etc.

The letter usually comes from an “intermediary” who speaks “on behalf” of someone rich and powerful. This other person, the “real boss,” is either trying to transfer money out of a troubled country or has a business offer for the taking. The “Iraqi re-construction” scam is of the latter type.

Another give-away in this scam is the country-code at the end of the return e-mail – “si”, which stands not for Iraq but Slovenia.

If you can convince yourself why Prime Minister Al-Maliki’s “director general of the budget department/debt management office (DMO) of the ministry of finance” would send you a job solicitation e-mail from Slovenia, then perhaps you deserve to be parted from your savings as well.