A Cynical Look On E-Mail Scams

It would appear that Scam E-mails have become much more prevalent recently. This can be a very dangerous thing to someone not skeptical of becoming the worlds next million or billionaire over a lottery contest they never entered. Nor is it safe to someone who believes that they will really be getting the sizable yet non-existent inheritance of a dead African doctor for only the cost of a five thousand dollar wire.

Because we are skeptical, let's take a look at one.
This was sent to me a day ago:

Skip down to the second line if you don't want to read what I guess this person calls "Writing"

Sender:
"FEDEX DELIVERY COMPANY"
To:
undisclosed-recipients
Subject:
[ No Subject ]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATTN:
We want to acknowledge the receipt of your email in this office and also want you to know that these package(Conferable Bank Draft of $800.000.00United States Dollars) will not be deliver to you without some proper identification. I have never met you before like I said and to be able to carry out our duties effectively, We must be convinced that you are who the testament says you are.Re-confirm to us through the below via email;
Claims Requirements
1. Name in full---------------------2.Address---------------------------
3. Sex--------------------------------4.Country--------------------------
5. Marital Status------------------6. Age -------------------------------
7. Next Of Kin----------------------8. Occupation-----------------------
9. Phone/Fax-----------------------10. Annual Income
The above requested information will enable us deliver your parcel correctly without any mistake or delivering your parcel to a wrong person. Furthermore,you might be asking yourself how comes this email,check or draft, Anyway,your check was brought to this office by a Lottery Fiduciary Agent Or Claim Agent, signifying that you are a rightful winner to their Lottery Award selected randomly from 10 lucky email addresses which your email address is one of the lucky email address. FedEx courier service company mailing you as per your parcel that was brought to this company to be delivered to you by lottery groups, along the delivery process that brought a misunderstanding between you and the lottery claim agent and in regards of their request as per their insurance certificate cost and tax fee which happened to be the course of your parcel being pending for the past months/one year. Meanwhile we are hereby happy to inform you that the FedEx Company has finalized everything with the nicon insurance company of Nigeria and the internal revenue office as the company organization has also listed 24 valuable parcels to be intact in their office after the released of the parcels from the nicon insurance company and internal revenue office. We inform you once again that your parcel that contains the sum of $800.000.00 United States Dollars, is among the 24 parcels listed which is now in our office and also with your name as the receiver despise that we lost your private residential addresss, which is an indication that you can now re-send your residential address,telephone as stated above back to the FedEx company where your parcel can be delivered to you without hesitation.
Meanwhile remember that the sender of this parcel to you thats the fudiciary agent still ownes this company the sum of $500.00 before incident occurs Note this fee is not just for delivery but with the stamduty, this company has spend out of their incomes in the process by recovery back your parcel so dear customer we once again appreciate your patronage in our favour. Without hesitations you are to pay for just the balance left by your sender since we have lost his contact.so that your parcel can be delivered to your residential address before it accumulate a demurrage after one week only,as you know your parcel is not just an ordinary parcel but with a huge amount and I think you understand what I mean by accumulating a demurrage? Which you will not allow to happen to your recovery parcel that almost gone if not for the love that the good God have for you by favoring you with his favour because it was god who did it not by your power but by the spirit say the lord. We assure you that your parcel will arrive at your country in two days time and it will get to your door step the third day as soon as this company receive the balance left by you and the tracking number of your parcel will be sent to you via e-mail immediately so that you can track it yourself to see your parcel coming on the way and you will also know when it will arrive at your country because we operate in trust and loyalty in your favour.
AND ALSO WITH YOUR SWIFT RESPONCE ON HOW THE PAYMENT OF ($500.00) FOR DELIVERY CAN BE MADE BY YOU.
Get back to us as soon as possible for payment detail for your delivery.

Mr. Russell E
Email: fedexdeliveryservice@w.cn
Tel: +234 805 312-02-32
FEDEX COURIER MANAGING DIRECTOR.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The easiest way to tell if an E-mail sent to you is "a fake" is to just throw a big portion into a search engine. It will probably show up under Scam titles all over the place, like the page you are viewing now.

At a glance- Notice that the scammer did not fill out a subject, this makes it easier to get around spam filters that might normally keep it out of the main inbox. Because so many people send real e-mails without a subject line, the spam filters have little choice but to allow them. Also notice that the e-mail claims to be from Fedex, a well recognized transportation company. If the e-mail really was from Fedex, the address would be from (blank)@Fedex.com not a simple @hotmail.com account. This scammer was such a half-wit that he didn't even spoof his e-mail address.(Be careful, some do.) Apart from that, the phone number our brilliant scammer left isn't based in the US--Fedex is a US company.

Down to the fun stuff- Remember our article about chain posts on facebook? The same principal pertaining to grammar goes here. This e-mail is absolutely appalling, and though I know of some managers that should be required to pass some sort of test before they're in charge of anyone, I'm quite sure that Fedex wouldn't hire a "Managing Director" that didn't know what English was... In fact, I doubt the person who wrote this could even manage to spell "English"

Apart from the incredible amount of spelling errors that a simple spell check would have fixed, which I will put in bold, there are quite a few sentences that don't even seem to make sense.
As an example:
" Which you will not allow to happen to your recovery parcel that almost gone if not for the love that the good God have for you by favoring you with his favour because it was god who did it not by your power but by the spirit say the lord."
..... What?

The further one goes on in the E-mail, the less sense it starts to make. It's almost as if two different people wrote the e-mail.

Other Hints- The scammers give away their location when they talk about nicon,which is some sort of phony insurance company based in Nigeria. (The home of the majority of scammers) The writer also constantly refers to him or her self in the E-mail, and originally, the only purpose of the E-mail was to obtain contact information.
So, I gave them Contact information--not mine of course.

1. Name in full---------------------2.Address---------------------------
3. Sex--------------------------------4.Country--------------------------
5. Marital Status------------------6. Age -------------------------------
7. Next Of Kin----------------------8. Occupation-----------------------
9. Phone/Fax-----------------------10. Annual Income

1. Name: You're An Idiot
2. Address: Up Yours
3. Sex: Not from you
4. Country: Nicetrytopia
5. Marital Status: Maybe
6. Age: 1337
7. Next of Kin: My Uncle's Sister's Brother's Roommate's Cousin
8. Occupation: Mocking you
9. Phone: 588-2300-Empire -- Today!
10. Annual Income: -13 and 1 half Trytopia Dollars

If I get a response, I'll post it here.

Summary- Logically, we could have gotten rid of this one with just what we have at a glance. This is a scam to get $500 dollars out of you, and whatever else is in the account that you used. Also, after spending too long reading this gibberish, I have obtained a very large headache.
From this we can conclude that this particular scam e-mail causes loss of money and or headaches.