English Chess Forum

URGENT MESSAGE
Mrs Vicky Thilaganathan has had her email address book hacked and now people are getting requests for financial help to help her in an emergency situation which occured - no such thing has happened of course but she cannot warn people because she cannot access the address book.
If you get an email from V Thilaganathan it is a scam - title something like 'Can you help me'. Don't phone Vicky at the moment she's getting lots of calls asking if she is ok.

Peter Turner
ECF Honorary Life Vice-President

DO NOT be tempted to reply to the email!!

and be wary of strange mails from Stewart Reuben too

(seriously)!

We had this from a member of our chess club.

Claimed to be stuck in Madrid after having mobile/money stolen.

Referred to mobile as his 'cell' though, which I don't remember hardly any English people using.

Sure enough, he had his hotmail account hacked and couldn't warn anybody.

PS there is a scam going around where a parcel delivery service leaves a card through the door asking you to ring a number to arrange collection. It puts you through to some Bermuda type number which instantly charges your phone bill £325.

If it's odd question it - thieves don't wear stripey jumpers.

You've got it in one, supposed to be stranded in Madrid and visa card not working etc, etc.

i heard about a scam where you are invited to consolidate all your game fees into into one annual amount.

This is a very common scam and has been going on for a very long time. It uses information from your emails and so can personalise the email going out to make it sound believable. I often get ones like that saying they were at a "chess conference" and need to get home etc.

Just ignore anything like this. Just like the ones that say they will be offering you a job, one that you haven't even applied for!

Or if you run a tournament a lot of foreign (usually a specific African country which I would like to name but lets say it was called Niberia) Niberian officials want to have invites for random players so to get them into the UK. I have had from other countries such as one that sounds like Beg-on-knees.

I'm a bit disappointed to have none of these. Is that wrong?

I went through my spam file too. The best I can offer are a series of unsolicited removal quotes to Australia with pdf attachments. Maybe I should open those, to get some value for money from my anti-virus software.

I received a message of this nature from Joe French some months ago.

I sent him a reply hoping he was enjoying his time in Madrid and suggested that he start thumbing a lift back to Basingstoke whilst reading an Orwell novel to pass the time.

The use of semi-coherent sentences in the original message was the give-away that it wasn't genuine.

I got a message like this from a well known GM a few months ago. After typing the hotel's phone number into Google, I found a website with an identical message in someone else's name, which confirmed that it was a scam.

Earlier this week, I got a message from Colonel Qaddafi's personal doctor saying that he fled Libya for Ivory Coast, and if I rang him on the number that was in the message title, I could share with him the late dictator's assets. You will all be pleased to hear that I did not take up his offer.

Regards,

Neville Belinfante,

PS to Peter - please pass on my best wishes to Mrs Thilaganathan the next time you see her.

The latest e-mail scam which I have just received:

"How are you doing? I and my family came over to Spain for a short vacation. unfortunately,we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash, cell phones and credit card were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.

We've been to the Embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and our flight leaves tomorrow but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle the bills. Please I really need your financial assistance..Please, Let me know if you can help us out?

I will be waiting to hear from you.

Thanks."

Isn't there also a scam whereby in order to continue a journey from India to Birmingham one has to exit the plane and be frog marched to the nearest cash point to extract funds for a few litres of aviation spirit?

Perhaps it was a joke?

I got one this morning from Stewart Rueben at aol.com - he was mugged in Spain and needs $1450 to get home.

If you get this email I urge you to send no money to get this person repatriated!

Wilf Arnold wrote:I got one this morning from Stewart Rueben at aol.com - he was mugged in Spain and needs $1450 to get home.

If you get this email I urge you to send no money to get this person repatriated!

That's a bit harsh...

I received this e-mail from two chessplayers, one of which was Stewart, and the other is someone who Stewart wouldn't know. Odd that it should arrive from two unique sources...

"Stewart" wrote to me, too. A curiosity is that the return path on the email is _______.______.co.uk, rather than the .com of the "sender".

Has Stewart's email account been compromised?