A significant number of University of Dayton community members have received e-mail propositions promising large sums of money in exchange for some minimal assistance from the recipient. 

  These e-mails are usually from a foreign interest claiming some astronomical amount of money is temporarily in the hands of an ex-official of the government and is not immediately committed to anyone or anything, but the money needs to be exported to a foreign bank quickly in order to secure it for the holder.  The recipient is offered as much as 1/3 of the entire amount just for providing an account for the money to be deposited in.  Some of these e-mails list very emotional circumstances to make the recipient feel good about being able to help. 

  Of course, there is no money.  This con is an attempt to get personal information, which is used to launch any of a wide variety of vicious economic attacks against the unsuspecting recipient. 

  There have been many such schemes run on people to date and many have lost everything they owned.  None of these schemes ever pays off to anyone. 

  Included below are a few samples of the e-mails received by members of the university community.  Following those samples are a number of pertinent links concerning fraud awareness. 

E-mail scam targets bank

Citizens Bank warned customers Tuesday not to respond if they receive an e-mail from scam artists requesting account data and personal information. The e-mail claims Citizens' "technical services" department needs the information for a software upgrade -- a message that is "not legitimate," said bank spokeswoman Sylvia Bronner. "Your bank is never going to ask you to put your personal information in an e-mail," she said. Other banks, such as Citibank, have been targeted by similar "phishing" e-mails recently to dupe consumers. Citizens also has posted on the home page of its Web site (www.citizensbank.com) a red-letter warning, "Caution! Unsolicited Email Scams." It urges recipients of such messages to call Citizens toll-free at (877) 229-6430.

Internet Fraud Complaint Center

National Fraud Information Center

Internet Fraud

Identity Theft

Association of Certified Fraud Examiners

National Fraud Information Center Telemarketing

AARP Identify Theft

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