News FBI and Spanish Police in biggest yet 419 raid

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/07/21/Big_419_raids/

 

No less than four hundred officers from the Spanish police, the FBI and the US Postal Service were involved with the investigation

I never knew the Post Office was a crime fighting force...

On the plus side, it's good to hear that we should hopefully have less spam arriving soon.

 

I once got an email from a CC bank I use. It claimed their main server was down and gave an alternate login site until it was back up. This was long ago so I debated if it was real. At the time I said to myself 'I don't need to access my account, I'll wait for the server to come back up'. I'm a little wiser now and of course I know it was a scam now.

My point is, aren't email scams common knowledge by now? A little common scense and the delete key should be all that's required to shut down these people. I truely don't understand how they got so much money to be as big as they were.

I guess greed is more powerful than intelligence.

 

Much as I sympathise for the poor souls who get scammed, part of me does have a sly chuckle at their expense. It takes a particularly virulent strain of stupidity to fall for such patently transparent scams. No doubt their failure to see through the ploy is in many cases exacerbated by greed - you can almost see the glimmer of gold in their otherwise lifeless piggy little eyes at the promise of a 10% stake in the $100m that is to be moved through their bank account or whatever.

I mean, seriously, what sort of person, on receiving an unsolicited email from Sheik Akbar al-Fakour Haloum offering a share in the ill gotten spoils of his recently murdered father's oil business in exchange for access to his bank details, goes "ooh looky - free money from a total stranger who I've never heard of! Better email him all my bank details now before he changes his mind!"?

Might as well excise one of your own kidneys and send it in the post, along with your life savings (in cash), the keys to your house and car and a freshly signed and witnessed will leaving them all your worldly possessions and your eternal soul.

 

Should send your toaster as well, you won't be affording bread anytime soon.

 

I wouldn't mind the 419 scams nearly so much if they could construct a simple sentence correctly, never mind spell! It's all I can do to stop my obsessive-compulsive side drafting emails back to them, correcting their horrendous grammar and spelling errors.

 

They mainly investigate and fight mail fruad (not just for the USPS, but for UPS, FedEx, etc.).

 

How does an internet scam involving bank accounts constitute mail fraud?

 

e-mail fraud?

 

And since when does the post office have any jurisdiction over e-mail?

 

It's not just email...they send things over fax and through mail too, and request people to send information back to them through mail. That constitutes mail fraud, hence the USPS.

Besides...if they can deliver my mail come rain, snow, or shine, they can fight crime too...