New MSN email problems.

Why is this woman trying to give me money via email?

• i got these emails recently: I wish to make a donation to you of 4.8 Million Euros. As my doctor just confirmed to me that I have limited days to live due to the cancerous problems I am suffering from. I have decided to donate this fund to you and want you to use this gift which comes from my late husband's effort to open a charity organization. If you can assure me of being able to handle my offer please get back to me for more details by emailing me on my private email address: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sincerely Yours, Senora Clarisia Antonio. THE NEXT EMAIL SAID: Thank you for your response, it goes to show that you have been destined to be great and I implore you to be as honest as possible in this offer as the spirit of my late husband will be with you always and will also bless you for your effort in seeing that persons are brought out of their predicament. I have discussed this matter with my Lawyer, he is going to work with you in order to secure the funds from the Bank where it is being kept for safe custody in a very proper and legal manners and he will make the arrangement with the Bank in your name, as the new beneficiary of the funds and also my next of kin. However, be informed that all the expenses attached to your documentations, paper work or attorney fee will be taken care of by me. Therefore, you do not need to pay my attorney any dime whatsoever. My Attorney is Alberto Martinez. Do email him at once and let him commence with the documentation process, his email address is: [email protected] You can also reach him through his telephone number, which is + 003494362028 but note that you must ensure that this is not disclosed to anybody until the money has been successfully transferred to you because of security reasons on my side. As for how I got your email, it was gotten after a proper white page search via your area zip code with the help of the lord leading me. You are implored to use this funds for the less privileged, widows, orphans, destitute and indigent persons in your society at large. Please, do your best to see that the dreams of my husband SIR Alex Antonio of blessed memory and my dream is fulfilled and make sure this is kept confidential until the transfer is completed and the good works of charity commences. Sincerely yours, Senora. Clarisia Antonio

• Answer:

  100% scam. There is no Clarisia Antonio, no one dying of cancer, no money in the bank. There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money. The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the attorney, Alberto Martinez and will demand you pay for made-up fees, in cash, and only by Western Union or moneygram. Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever. Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram. You could post up the email addresses that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information. Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash. Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer. If you google "fake dying widow of cancer scam", "fraud attorney charity Western Union scam" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts of victims and near-victims of this type of scam.