Jobs, jobs, jobs! If you want to earn some fast cash by ripping off small businesses so that:

a) your criminal bosses in Eastern Europe collect big time; and
b) you may get caught owing a bank many thousands of dollars (somewhere just under $10,000) you already wired to Eastern Europe

then reply to the following spam message:

Subject: Job position REF47732
From: Shelly Dubois

Compliments

I am a manager of the HR department of a large multinational company. Our company is met in many departments, such as:
- real estate
- companies setting-up and winding-up
- bank accounts opening and maintenance
- logistics
- private undertaking services
- etc.

We need employees in USA:
- salary 2.500 dollars + bonus
- 1 - 2 working hours per day
- free timetable

If you are interested in this job, please, send us your contact information: Shelly@[removed]-target.net
Full name:
Country:
E-mail:
Mobile phone-number:

Note! We are searching Americans only! >

Please mention your name and write the phone number. Our manager will contact you to fix an interview.

And here's a variation that just came in:

Subject: Finance Manager vacansy for USA
From: Jim Woods

Compliments

I am the personnel department manager and I am appealing to you in the name of the large-scale and first-rate partnership. Our company takes an active part in the life of its subsidiaries, for example:
-property
- bank account operations
- transportation and logistics
- private enterprise service
- etc.

We have vacancies to be filled by American residents only:
- salary 2.500 dollars + bonus
- underemployment
- flexible working schedule

If you would like to work with us, please provide us the following information: Jim@[removed]-target.net
First name:
Surname
Country of residence
Place of residence
E-mail box
Contact phone number

Attention! We need American residents only.>

Please provide us with your Personal data (Phone number and First and Last name) and our manager will contact to you to make a brief interview.

The email address domain was registered a couple of days ago. No web site exists at that domain (at least at the default location), but the Apache server is alive (somewhere in Russia).

Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are under financial stress these days. Offers like these, despite sounding too good to be true, will yield plenty of applicants — lambs to slaughter.

A common ploy among advance-fee scammers is the attempt to rend the recipient's heart because the rich sender now has a terminal illness and wants to make sure his or her booty winds up in good hands — rather than in the hands of his or her greedy and untrustworthy family members. This is a triple scam because the dying person wants the recipient to use the funds to distribute among charities — really assuming that the recipient is supremely greedy, and plans to take the money and run once the sender kicks the bucket. In other words, the scammer is assuming his victims will try to scam the dead scammer. In the process, however, it is the email recipient who will be the only one scammed out of fake processing, storage, transfer, and other fees that ultimately never yield a penny.

The medical trend I've noticed in such 419 scam messages arriving here recently has been an enormous outbreak of esophageal cancer (often with the correct spelling of the fake diagnosis). That's a safe choice, unlike one Nigerian woman who claimed some years ago to be riddled with prostate cancer.

Look out folks, especially Windows users. A message claiming to originate from YouTube has an unwanted surprise.

The message Subject: line is:

Subject: YouTube Open the WORLD for you.

The body of the message consists of one publicly hosted image snapshot of a YouTube home page:

If you click anywhere on the image, you may download a malware file (.scr extension) from a hijacked web site.

Danger, Will Robinson!!

I suppose there are plenty of takers for so-called downloadable or OEM software pitched by countless spam messages over the years. In the "old" days, it was just pirated software the buyer would get (if he or she got anything in return for $59). In more recent years, however, these warez sellers profit still further by embedding malware into the packages.

Thus, I got a laugh out of a spam message today that listed three easy steps to getting cheap software:

Subject: Windows7 much more stable

Hello, Dannyg
What does the "Downloadable Software" mean?

Step 1 - Download soft archive and save it on your computer.
Step 2 - Extract archive.
Step 3 - Install it and use!

Visit our Windows and MAC store

Dannyg, D33W-3459 your personal code to get 30% discount on all products.

You see, the seller left out one more item:

Step 4 - Hand over your computer and passwords to us without knowing it!

Immediately after the devastating Haiti earthquake, the expected phony charity spam filled the 'tubes. But just because the Haiti recovery may have slipped from the headlines doesn't mean that crooks have given up on it. Here is a Haiti recovery donation scam email I just saw:

From: "Richard Zeeman" <info@savehaitiworld.org>
Subject: Please Read

Save Rural Haiti World Wide.
177 Chesterfield Road South
MANSFIELD NG19 7AR
Phone:+44-701[removed]
Fax:+44-705[removed]

We create your indulgence to introduce ourself.We are a group of young minded professional in our own individual rights who has come together from various backgrounds to raise funds to save survivors of the Haiti Earthquake.Due to the present Logistic problems such as these quotes....

Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, the four-star chief of U.S. Southern Command, told reporters yesterday the U.S. military was initially “focused on getting command and control and communications there so that we can really get a better understanding of what’s going on.”

(Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/earthquake-hit-haiti-still-offline-military-
relief-agencies-rush-to-rebuild-comms/#ixzz0dnFhfRLs)

It’s not just the airport where connectivity is lost. The headquarters for MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, partially collapsed, and a significant portion of its communications network was severed.

How Do We Assist? We have on ground in various villages, locals who help us to ferry relief materials dropped by United Nations helicopters in the air to survivors in their various camps in the interior part of Haiti as government and international attention is only on Port-au-Prince.We need your financial donation to continue the delivering of the relief materials to those who need them the most.

Our activities are approved and monitored by the United Nations and the British Red Cross Society.

Contact us on how you can help by donating to this laudable cause by return email and phone number above.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Mr.Richard Zeeman

There is no such organization, Save Rural Haiti World Wide. There is no registered domain, savehaitiworld.org. The Reply-To: address is to a free gmail account. The phone numbers supplied are cell phone numbers.

This scam is probably being run by 419ers who are diversifying their outgoing messages. They want to get you on the hook and will drain you for everything they can through their proficient con artistry.

Haiti still needs help, but there are plenty of legitimate organizations you've heard of that provide real aid.

I wrote yesterday about an inept Bank of America phisher who couldn't shoot straight. Today another guy — a few bits short of a byte — was having problems with his attempts either at phishing or PC infection (bold face added).

Subject: PayPal - Account Review. PayPal team identified some unusual activity in your account!

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the
banking system. During a recent screening, we noticed an issue regarding your credit card account. It may have been accessed by an unauthorized third party.

As a precaution, we are requesting additional verification of your identity and payment information in order to protect your credit card against future unauthorized transactions.

Please download the Attachments below and complete the requested information. The situation will be immediately reviewed by the fraud department and we will remove any holds on this account.

Copyright © 1999-2009 PayPal. All rights reserved.

Problem was, there were no attachments to the email. No form, no link, no nothing. Just money wasted by the sender, as well as wasted global internet bandwidth, wasted server processing by spam filters, and wasted disk space on those servers who let this junk through.

I'm happiest about wasting the sender's resources. It also forced me to look up the plural in the dictionary: doofuses.