Here was the email:
Hi Bob,
It may be hard to believe, but people regularly forget about deposits, property they owned or overlook funds that they should have inherited. This actually happens more often than you might think. In fact, there are billions of dollars in unclaimed assets in locations throughout the United States. We performed a simple search on your email address ([email protected]), and quickly discovered that you have unclaimed assets. Please take a closer look by following the link below and hopefully you can regain control of your missing valuable property that is rightfully yours.
Reclaim Your Money Now
Thank you!
This looked tempting. After all, I did collect quite a bit of unclaimed property recently and wrote about it in this column. But this looked fishy. All they had was my email address (pretty easy to get), and if I clicked on the blue link, I’m pretty sure they would have asked for my full name, address, birthday, Social Security Number, etc. Maybe my bank account routing number so they could transfer funds to me. (Ha! Fat chance!) I don’t know this for sure because I never clicked.
I “woke up” before I clicked on the link and deleted the email. No harm done. If I had additional unclaimed property coming (and I’ve checked in every state where I have ever lived), it wouldn’t be under my email address. It would be under my legal name (which, as you probably know, isn’t Bob Dancer.)
We’re all used to appeals from the exiled prince in Nigeria or wherever, but this was a new one. At least to me.
They say it’s easier to cheat a greedy person. And the promise of “free money” can certainly increase one’s greed momentarily. After all, who would want to miss out on money that is rightfully theirs?
I may have missed out on a windfall here, but I’ll take that chance. I more likely avoided an identity theft problem — which is the far greater concern to me.
Most people, I assume, upon reflection will agree that this is probably a scam. And properly avoid it by deleting it. But it’s easier to avoid if you’ve heard about it beforehand. Which is why I’m posting this.
This might be the best AP Advice you have given – using common sense to weed out a potential iffy situation
Yeah. Searching using your pseudonymous email address smells to high heaven!
Well, congratulations bob. We got home from afternoon of VP (winner for both of us)to hear our answering machine tell us we won 5.1 million in publishers clearing house. Can’t wait to call them & supply all our banking history to collect
Yes, I have prizes coming from everywhere, if only I will give them my information. And Amazon leaves voice mails telling me how much they are getting ready to debit from “your account” (I have none). And Jessica from “Card Member Services” is a regular. I’ll never feel lonely.
It turns out I have about 250 different cars, and the warrantee is over on all of them. And each car manufacture has called to remind me I have no warrantee. As for prizes, that Nigerian Prince has been emailing me for 20 years. He keeps telling me he has terminal cancer, and he wants to give me his money, $25.5 million US dollars. And they keep calling my “My dear.”. I guess “terminal” means something else in Nigerian.
Ed Mcmahon and Dick Clark called and said I won!! Woke up and realized I had watched a commercial rerun.
A few years ago I got an email ostensibly from the IRS: apparently I had a refund due–even though I had just filed and owed them money, as usual–and would I be so good as to give them a credit card number so they could credit the refund to the card? All according to standard IRS procedure, of course.
In situations like this, I always follow Drew Carey’s advice and check my driver’s license to make sure I wasn’t born yesterday.
Then back in January there was an email from someone I know asking “How’s it going?” I replied noncommitally and in a few minutes there’s another email asking me to buy $500 worth of Apple gift cards and send him the numbers because he wants to give someone a birthday present and can’t do it himself because he’s traveling–but don’t worry, he’ll reimburse me. Turned out his account had been hacked and several other friends of his had got similar requests.
Similarly with PayPal: every so often I get an authentic-looking email saying my account has been hacked and please kindly click on this link to log in and resolve the situation. No, thanks: don’t need any identity theft, ransomware, or trojan viruses today.
Cheers.
The information is available for free from just about every state’s website. No need to respond to these crooks.
This site is legit. Can check for unclaimed assets in any state for free.
https://unclaimed.org/search/
If I have the time (and am in the mood)… I accept these calls and get real excited they called me. If it’s for solar energy (or anything else home-related), I tell them I am very interested – but does it matter if my house is in foreclosure? Some will say it does matter and they can’t help me, others hang up. It has reduced the number of these calls greatly.
If I get a call about my car’s warranty, I either tell them I don’t drive or that “she” (me) is dead. These calls come less often as well.
The car warranty expiration post cards coming in the mail are my favorite!
There’s another scam over here which I honestly haven’t figured yet. You are selling something on a pupular internet platform. And here’s the thing: A couple of days later some Nigerian super hero tries to contact me and pretends like he’s interested to buy the merchandise. In fact, he’s not even getting specific about the thing he wants to purchase so he’s not even bothering the time to make it look a bit more realistic. So then in the next sentence he’s trying to make me believe he’s willing to send a messenger service (FED Ex, whatever) to pick up the stuff and he would want to pay me in full in advance. Until today I haven’t figured out what the scam is but there must be one and normal people would wire the cash and receive a parcel 2 days later in their mailbox but not this guy. I still don’t know what the problem is to accept the parcel through regular postal services. I have been warned about this scam and never click on any hyper link that I don’t know and think it’s fishy. However, I would love to know what it’s all about…..
From Switzerland
Boris
I would have deleted the email as well. As the economy tanks scammers and thieves will do anything to acquire something of value. Even if it means cutting off a catalytic converter to get platinum and palladium to convert to currency which is losing value which should be blatant to everybody. Hopefully they’ve left your packages on the doorstep alone.