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Recently, I received the following e-mail:

Subject: Reply Me...Urgently

From: [email protected]

From the Desk of Mr. James Kuffor Bank Manager, Ghana.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Unclaimed Funds Worth($7.5 Million)Kindly do Contact me for More Details my Private Email= [email protected]

Regards

Mr James Kuffor

This is clearly a spam that was not caught by my filter, but I was thinking about it: What's the purpose of this spam?

The message is a classic scam. There is no URL or attached file. The e-mail came from a trusted server (or even disguised as a trusted server) and the e-mail in the body message is also from another trusted server (OBS: I changed the real name to "something" just in case of a stolen e-mail account).

My question is: What's the type of this attack? I just thought in two options:

  • Some type of (poorly made) social engineering attack that works somewhere;
  • Some type of mail bombing;

The first option is too much fantasy to me, but I don't know, maybe it works. The second option is plausible, but I just received one e-mail (I checked my spam folder).

I also found this similar question here, but the e-mail does not use words like "viagra" or anything that justifies the "Bayesian Poisoning", so my question remains: What's the objective of this type of spam? Is it a know attack?

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    Looks similar to this email scam.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam
    – Sravan
    Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 17:02
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    It's asking you to reply. So then they will ask you for money while inventing fake story about gold in Nigeria.
    – Aria
    Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 17:09
  • Obviously to get you to contact them for details; their private email is [email protected]
    – Criticizing Israel not allowed
    Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 22:23
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    Lost government funds in Syria that need to be transferred somewhere safe, a giant diamond found in Congo that needs to be smuggled out of the country, the tiger cloak of General Gaddafi in Libya, and the slabs of the walls of the palace in Niniveh (Iraq) are other popular options right now. You can safeguard them, we just have some trouble with the fees to get it out of the country.
    – grochmal
    Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 22:26

1 Answer 1

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It's a Nigerian email scam (as @Sravan commented).

If you contact that email the scammer will promise you a lot of money and ask for a small fee for document copies, then a little more for document authentication, and the sky is the limit.

People often fall for this scam because it seems too easy to wire 10 dollars someone and hope something will come out of it. The scammer keeps asking for small quantities for bureaucracies, and promising the fortune will be release soon. As 10 dollars turns into hundreds, the victim keeps sending more money out of fear of ruining their initial "investment."

If you want to read funny stories, go to 419eater.com and read the emails real people used to play with the scammers.

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