Heather Dropkin

[Neil Graham]

I've had an e-mail today from this person linked to a site all4edu.org. It makes a claim about her son Alex and his interest in chess.

It's clearly rubbish but I wondered if anyone else has had a similar e-mail?

[John Upham]

Is this person known as Heather Dropkin Paccione by any chance?

[Richard James]

Hello Mr. James,

I hope this isn't too much of an interruption to your day but I wanted to send you a quick thank you on behalf of my 11-year-old son Alex for your links page - rtchessclub.com/links/ . He learned how to play chess a few months back and has become completely enthralled with it. He's constantly challenging his friends to matches and plays online when there's no one else around. He wanted to dive deeper into it so he and I were doing some research when we discovered your page. He found everything posted on there fascinating and I just wanted to let you know how much we appreciate you putting it together!

While we were looking around, we also came across this page about the similarities between chess and legal strategies that he found very interesting - llcattorney.com/small-business-blog/business-strategy/link-between-chess-and-legal-strategic-success . It had a section on the bottom about chess strategies and the whole thing has him now considering a future career as a lawyer. He asked if I would pass it along to you as his way of saying thanks for all the help, in case you wanted to add it to your other resources. If you do, would you mind letting me know? I'd love to show him!

Thanks again for everything,
Heather Dropkin
[email protected]

Yes, I received this the other day. I've been getting these every few months for years now, from different names, with a different name for the child and a different site to link to.

[Neil Graham]

Thanks Richard - that's a copy of the one I received with a couple of name changes to make it more relevant to me (ie the Nottinghamshire Chess Association website). As to John's question, I'm afraid I don't know - it just looked like the normal unsolicited rubbish that appears in my inbox; however it seems some effort has been made to make it look genuine. It certainly escaped my spam filter.

Anyway must go - Elon Musk has selected my e-mail address and I am one of 50 people who will be given a new Tesla car!

[Joey Stewart]

This reminds me of a few years ago (might be as many as 10 now) when I would receive random emails from real chess players saying they were trapped in another country with their bank card blocked and could I send them just enough money for a flight home.

It was actually a better scam too, I thought, even with the advances in technology it feels like scammers are getting stupider these days

[Kevin Thurlow]

"This reminds me of a few years ago (might be as many as 10 now) when I would receive random emails from real chess players saying they were trapped in another country with their bank card blocked and could I send them just enough money for a flight home."

I got one of those - sadly the scammers had chosen to impersonate a nonagenarian that almost certainly didn't travel to African countries.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

I got one of those, seemingly from a chess playing friend, ten years ago:

I Hope you get this on time, I made a trip to Melitopol,(Ukraine) and had my bag stolen from me with my passport and personal effects therein. The embassy has just issued me a temporary passport but I have to pay for a ticket and settle my hotel bills with the Manager.

I have made contact with my bank but it would take me 3-5 working days to access funds in my account, the bad news is my flight will be leaving very soon but I am having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let me leave until I settle the bills, I need your help/LOAN financially and I promise to make the refund once I get back home, you are my last resort and hope, Please let me know if I can count on you and I need you to keep checking your email because it's the only way I can reach you.

Unfortunately the scammer made the mistake of sending it to a long list of chess players rather than blind copying them in on the message, so we could all see who the message was sent to.

I did a reply all:

I must say you do have bad luck on your travels Steve. OK, I'll send you another £10,000, but this really is the last time!

Some of the other people the message was sent to replied to this, offering to chip in various amounts from £1000 upwards and the scammer got very excited, thinking it must be his lucky day. I then told him all the money had been wired over to the Western Union office he had specified, but accidentally got the city wrong, naming one a couple of hundred miles away. Hopefully he travelled there to find out if I was telling the truth.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"I then told him all the money had been wired over to the Western Union office he had specified, but accidentally got the city wrong, naming one a couple of hundred miles away. Hopefully he travelled there to find out if I was telling the truth."

I did read of a scam-baiter that arranged to meet the scammer in a different country, then got an angry email saying. "You didn't turn up!". When he stopped laughing, the scam-baiter replied, apologising and saying he was held up in traffic, but he would definitely be there in 4 days time...