spam/scam e-mails to avoid - post yours, the funnier the better

[Joeseph]

Not particularly photography related, I've have had a couple of "interesting" opportunities come thru the mail recently, this one today was both sad & funny at the same time,
Feel free to post your most excellent unsolicited opportunities here that others can see the fishhooks & avoid like the plague...

Subject line: DEAREST ONE..

Donation!!!!


I am Mrs.Marit Brunel, I am 59 years old, I am dropping this short message from my sick bed after been diagnosed from a long time cancer of the blood.

From all indication my condition is really deteriorating, and my doctor has courageously advised that I may not live beyond the next two months, this is because the Seriousness of the cancer has reached a critical stage. I am looking for a trust and Good someone to confide on.

I have a fortune/Project ($18.5M) I want to entrust into your care you will use this money to help the needy, motherless, orphans and widows because I am one. Please respond to me for more details.

Remain blessed!

Mrs.Marit Brunel.

 

[DavidWatts]

18.5 million is not worth much when it is divided by the many tens of thousands of people who must have received her very important and timely personal email. I do hope Mrs. Brunel doesn't suffer much when her time is up. And may she herself be forever blessed and remembered for her abundant and thoughtful generosity.

 

[Joeseph]

I was thinking as the doctor was very courageous, wonder if he/she has been also asked to participate

 

[Mike_d]

I got one once that read something like, "Thank you for purchasing thing". Not an iPhone or Norton, just "thing". Talk about a low effort scam.

 

[Joeseph]

From: Mrs. Julia Bert
Address: Josef-Orlopp-Street, 95 10365
Berlin,
Germany.

Greetings from Germany. I wish you good health and prosperity. How are you and your family? I am Mrs. Julia Bert from Germany.

I am a philanthropist and investor. I engaged and committed myself to raising and donating humanitarian funds to organizations and individuals.

I am contacting you to offer a donation of $800,000 for Humanitarian Projects. You will use the fund to help disabled people, low-income families, motherless children, widows, and the sick. I would like you to handle and implement this humanitarian project in your community to reduce poverty, improve the standard of living for as many people as possible, provide free scholarships to poor children, and bring joy and happiness to the poor in your community with the funds I wish to donate to you.

Please reply as soon as possible so I can send you the full details of my noble and generous humanitarian donation.

May the peace, blessings, and mercy of God be upon you. I am waiting to hear from you.
Best Regards
Mrs. Julia Bert [Berlin, Germany]

 

[Joeseph]

Payment method declined:

Dear Customer,

Your cloud storage is full, and your photos, videos, contacts, and documents are no longer being backed up.

We attempted to renew your monthly subscription using your default payment method, but the transaction was unsuccessful.

Action required: Please update your payment information immediately. Failure to resolve this within 3 days will result in the permanent deletion of your personal data.

Update_Payment_Information <link removed>​

If you recently updated your payment, please disregard this message.

 

[West Coast Birder]

From: Mrs. Julia Bert
Address: Josef-Orlopp-Street, 95 10365
Berlin,
Germany.

Greetings from Germany. I wish you good health and prosperity. How are you and your family? I am Mrs. Julia Bert from Germany.

I am a philanthropist and investor. I engaged and committed myself to raising and donating humanitarian funds to organizations and individuals.

I am contacting you to offer a donation of $800,000 for Humanitarian Projects. You will use the fund to help disabled people, low-income families, motherless children, widows, and the sick. I would like you to handle and implement this humanitarian project in your community to reduce poverty, improve the standard of living for as many people as possible, provide free scholarships to poor children, and bring joy and happiness to the poor in your community with the funds I wish to donate to you.

Please reply as soon as possible so I can send you the full details of my noble and generous humanitarian donation.

May the peace, blessings, and mercy of God be upon you. I am waiting to hear from you.
Best Regards
Mrs. Julia Bert [Berlin, Germany]

Are you impugning the integrity of the good Ms. Bert, Duncan? How dare you, sir!

 

[Joeseph]

Are you impugning the integrity of the good Ms. Bert, Duncan? How dare you, sir!

maybe!

 

[Joeseph]

Office of the Attorney General
Headquarters 400 6th Street,
Washington DC 20001


Attn: Beneficiary,


This is to inform you that in the course of my investigation as director of the payment verification / implementation committee I came across your name as an unpaid fund beneficiary in the record of the Federal Reserve Bank and other banks that are supposed to get your funds released to you. My committee was set up by the payment reconciliation committee to verify and scrutinize all outstanding debts owed to our beneficiaries both local and international in accordance with the information received from the United States government, International monetary Fund and other countries over unpaid huge debts owed to Foreigners.

Having seen your file and my further questions to the officials of the banks and ministry of finance as to why your payment is still pending reveals the rot and corruption in the system. The bank officials told me that the reason why you haven't received your payment is due to your inability to pay for the required charges for transfer of funds to your account. When I asked them why they didn't deduct the said charges from your principal sum, I was given the flimsy excuse that you never authorized them to do so. When I put the question across to them if they ever advised you that such charges could be deducted from your principal fund,the answer I got was no. Now, if you do not tell this beneficiary that such charges could be deducted from his or her principal fund how will he or she know that such options are available for such beneficiaries?

From my investigation I discovered that these bank officials deliberately refused to let the charges be deducted from your principal fund because they want your fund to remain trapped in the bank, while they continue to extort money from beneficiaries under some flimsy excuse. You do not need to pay any money to any official. All you are required to do is swear an affidavit at the federal high court authorizing the bank to deduct all charges from your principal fund and transfer the balance of funds after deduction to your bank account. If you have spent any money in the past in your quest for payment, kindly let me know so that I can follow this up. You can reach me with your full name, address, phone number, copy of your ID and your age for a directive on how you can get the deduction done as soon as possible and get your payment also.


Yours sincerely,

Pamela Bondi
United States Attorney General

 

[OhLook]

Office of the Attorney General
Headquarters 400 6th Street,
Washington DC 20001


Attn: Beneficiary,


This is to inform you that in the course of my investigation as director of the payment verification / implementation committee I came across your name as an unpaid fund beneficiary in the record of the Federal Reserve Bank and other banks that are supposed to get your funds released to you. My committee was set up by the payment reconciliation committee to verify and scrutinize all outstanding debts owed to our beneficiaries both local and international in accordance with the information received from the United States government, International monetary Fund and other countries over unpaid huge debts owed to Foreigners.

Having seen your file and my further questions to the officials of the banks and ministry of finance as to why your payment is still pending reveals the rot and corruption in the system. The bank officials told me that the reason why you haven't received your payment is due to your inability to pay for the required charges for transfer of funds to your account. When I asked them why they didn't deduct the said charges from your principal sum, I was given the flimsy excuse that you never authorized them to do so. When I put the question across to them if they ever advised you that such charges could be deducted from your principal fund,the answer I got was no. Now, if you do not tell this beneficiary that such charges could be deducted from his or her principal fund how will he or she know that such options are available for such beneficiaries?

From my investigation I discovered that these bank officials deliberately refused to let the charges be deducted from your principal fund because they want your fund to remain trapped in the bank, while they continue to extort money from beneficiaries under some flimsy excuse. You do not need to pay any money to any official. All you are required to do is swear an affidavit at the federal high court authorizing the bank to deduct all charges from your principal fund and transfer the balance of funds after deduction to your bank account. If you have spent any money in the past in your quest for payment, kindly let me know so that I can follow this up. You can reach me with your full name, address, phone number, copy of your ID and your age for a directive on how you can get the deduction done as soon as possible and get your payment also.


Yours sincerely,

Pamela Bondi
United States Attorney General

Ms. Bondi couldn't have written that letter. Its sentences are too long for her to manage, and everything is spelled right.

 

[Joeseph]

Ms. Bondi couldn't have written that letter. Its sentences are too long for her to manage, and everything is spelled right.

I don't know Ms. Bondi well enough to comment, the message is indeed well written. Tempted to reply from some random Gmail account and see how much trouble I could get into by impersonating someone famous - maybe Charles Chaplin or Dorothy from Oz etc.

 

[Wilt]

I monitor my very elderly uncle's email.

1. For many months he has been receiving..."Your Cloud storage is full. Payment has been refused..."
2. In early October/November, "Your Cloud storage is full. Payment has been refused...you photos and data will be deleted on December 5, 2025"
3. AFTER December 5 deadline had passed, ""Your Cloud storage is full. Payment has been refused...you photos and data will be deleted on December 15, 2025"

...since he does not have a Cloud storage service (and had never used one) I am waiting for the next ultimatum.

 

[OhLook]

I monitor my very elderly uncle's email.

1. For many months he has been receiving..."Your Cloud storage is full. Payment has been refused..."
2. In early October/November, "Your Cloud storage is full. Payment has been refused...you photos and data will be deleted on December 5, 2025"
3. AFTER December 5 deadline had passed, ""Your Cloud storage is full. Payment has been refused...you photos and data will be deleted on December 15, 2025"

...since he does not have a Cloud storage service (and had never used one) I am waiting for the next ultimatum.

If this thread can be stretched to include phone calls . . . I get calls that similarly assume I subscribe to something or other. There's been a rash of them in recent weeks. The first two went like this: We're calling from xfinity, and we've detected that your modem isn't working correctly. I replied that since I'm not an xfinity customer, I didn't see how xfinity could detect anything about my modem. Besides, I was getting the Internet just fine. Later callers dropped the xfinity reference. Now they were calling from my television service company for some reason. I said I didn't have a television service company. (I really don't. The TV has long been unplugged.) They usually hang up at that point. The latest call was the most irritating. When I said I didn't have such a company, the guy said they were going to cancel my service for nonpayment. I said, "There is no service company! Do you understand?"

I try to stay calm and polite, but I have a hard time dealing with crazy logic, stupid logic. I am so tempted to go to "Does your mother know what you do for a living?"

 

[Joeseph]

If this thread can be stretched to include phone calls . . .

Absolutely it can! I got one of those a few weeks back, let me try & remember the sequence of the conversation & I'll post it

 

[Joeseph]

A few weeks back I received a call from an unknown number by someone claiming to be the branch manager at my local bank
Immediately in very, very skeptical mode I asked what the call was about
Apparently due to the type of account I had with the bank, I had won a monthly prize, but of course the caller needed to verify my details in order to process same.
When asked for my address I politely answered "you're my bank - you already have that"
Can I confirm my phone number "you called me, remember?" I chuckled...

Then asked for my date of birth - again I replied "you already have that"

Interestingly, they didn't ask for an account number or pin number but I was waiting for those questions to come up.
After some to-ing & fro-ing I was asked me to confirm the details they had on file.

Still they insisted I had actually won a prize, and it would be deposited into my account...
Having thanked the lady in the most deadpan voice I could muster I then called the Mrs and asked if she could phone the bank and confirm with the bank manager
wether this was all a load of bovine, the Mrs called the local branch & asked if they could confirm the branch managers name & put her through.

- they refused both on privacy grounds. <facepalm>

Later that day some money actually turned up in our account...

 

[Joeseph]

Oh no... my files are scheduled for deletion! whatever shall I do?



From: Final Notice <info@muppet.shop>
Sent: Friday, 6 February 2026 5:54 pm
To: Me <me@myemailaddress>
Subject: Critical: Your files are scheduled for deletion


Cloud
!
Action Required: Your payment method was declined. Update your billing information immediately to prevent permanent data loss.
Your storage capacity has been exceeded. Immediate action is required to retain your archived files.
ACCOUNT DEACTIVATED: DELETION IMMINENT <link removed>
Automatic renewal failed.

Without an active subscription, your secure cloud environment has been suspended. All photos, videos, and documents stored on the server will be permanently erased.
Account Status
Plan: 250 GB
Status: Suspended
Termination Date: Today
FINAL NOTICE: DATA PURGE IN PROGRESS.
Your account is currently locked.
Once the purge is complete, your personal data cannot be recovered.
REACTIVATE ACCOUNT & RECOVER FILES <link removed>
This is a final automated reminder.
Cloud Services Inc.
You received this email regarding the termination of your services.
Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy | Support <links removed>

 

[DavidWatts]

Ha! ^ I got the same notice about 10 times in the last 30 days. "secure cloud." what service is that?