Fuzzy - the exact thing happened to me last week.
"
I'm writing this with tears in my eye, my family and I came down here to Coundon Coventry,UK for a short vacation unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed, all cash, credit card and cell were stolen off us at GUN POINT 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 today but we're having problems settling the hotel bills, and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle the bills, I'm freaked out at the moment and wondering if you could help us with a quick loan, I promise I'll refund it once we get home. Please save me from the embarrassment of not being able to cover the bills. "
Two questions. Do they really have GUNS in the UK? And this guy's name is BOOTY? I'll be going to London soon, want me to kick his Booty?
Seriously, this crap has to be taken much more seriously by law enforcement. Wish you the best, happens way too much.
They basically took control over my email account - redirected all my Incoming emails to another email account, deleted all my contacts so I couldn't warn people of the scam. My daughter decided to play along and answered the scam email asking How Much money I needed and they answered:
"
Glad to read from you I have nothing left on me and I'm grateful to God that we still have our life and our passport cos it would have been worst if the hoodlums made away with our passport. I'm full of panic now as our flight leaves soon. Well i need you to help me with a quick loan about 1,800 Dollars to sort the bills and I promise I'll refund it once we get back home.. You can have it wire to my name via western union. Below are the details you will need to wire the money.
Name:- Sidney Booty
Location:- Jardine Cr, Coventry, West Midlands, CV4 9PL
United Kingdom
As soon as you have it done, kindly get back to me with the MTCN confirmation number. Let me know if you are heading to the western union now"
I spent two hours with the AT&T Internet Investigation Team to recover control over my email account and undo what they had done. I also went through my email to find any emails Confirming my login and passwords for various Websites and had to re-do all these passwords; luckily I haven't found any attempts to get into any of my financial accounts (I changed all my passwords anyway!). It took me two days to build my Contact List back up. AT&T said there were a lot of Professional Scammers operating right now - I have no idea how they got my email password that allowed them to take control of my email, my gut feeling is that somehow that got a hold of AT&T's Data-regardless, this is very scary! I feel your pain-I hope they get caught before more people get hurt.
AT&T recommended that everyone add additional "Security Questions" and answers to all of their Log in's.
