I just received an email from an attorney in Edinburgh, Scotland, telling me I had been named in the will of my uncle Charles Burroughs. I am supposed to be getting the princely sum of $500,000 equivalent. I never knew I had an uncle Charles, but the message said he was a distant relative. Why would this stranger include me in his will?
Why, indeed? If you replied to the message and expressed any kind of interest, we imagine that you will have received a follow-up message by the time you read our answer. We also predict that the follow-up message either asks for bank account information (so the attorney can wire the funds to you) or for a payment from you for taxes, to "permit the release of the funds." Either of which message should send you into a hasty retreat.
This has all the markings of an internet scam. If you give the "attorney" your bank account information, you can expect that information to be used against you, not for you. Instead of a wire transfer, you may get sent a counterfeit cashier's check, along with instructions to wire back to the "attorney" an amount to cover estate or other taxes. With or without the counterfeit cashier's check, your wire of funds to the "attorney" is likely to be money you would be quite literally throwing away, since you'd receive nothing of value for it, except a very expensive object lesson. The moral of this story? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
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Why, indeed? If you replied to the message and expressed any kind of interest, we imagine that you will have received a follow-up message by the time you read our answer. We also predict that the follow-up message either asks for bank account information (so the attorney can wire the funds to you) or for a payment from you for taxes, to "permit the release of the funds." Either of which message should send you into a hasty retreat.
