The pitter-pat of bogus PayPal money requests, from lazy thieves seeking obliging victims, continues.
I like this one.
Yep, this dude's running an advance-fee scam. If I send him $US200, he'll allow me to "collect [my] money". Except, of course, there is no actual money. There never is.
What I particularly like about this version of the scam is its pared-down, minimalist nature. "Matt Arcay" never sent me an e-mail, or anything. Just this money request. I have received not the slightest hint of the amount or source of the promised "your money" - just this ridiculous "if you want to collect your money simply agree to this and send the money, so you can receive your money".
(I don't know where scammers learn that odd repetitive grammar that repeats because it is repetitive grammar and redundant and says the same thing over and over. I've received similar messages from different putative locations, like this guy allegedly from Puerto, I'm sorry, I mean PUERTO RICO.)
Perhaps Mr "Arcay" did e-mail me separately, of course, but that message was spam-filtered, so all I received was the accompanying money-request e-mail from PayPal.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the only way "Arcay" contacts prospective marks, though. If they reply asking what the deal is then he knows he's got a live one.
What he really hopes for, though, is a mark who just sends him the $200 immediately. That's probably because they reckon "Arcay" meant to send a ton of money to some other person but has accidentally picked the mark instead. So the mark wants to cash in before "Arcay" discovers his mistake.
In that case, "Arcay" has basically won the lottery. A cow like that probably has a lot more milk to give.
I don't know whether it's possible for a scammer in one of the classic famous-only-for-scams countries, like Nigeria or some other TPLAC, to open a PayPal account. This scammer could actually be in the USA - or "Arcay" could be a money-mule front man for a scammer in some other nation.
(There may be some way to report this blatant fraud to PayPal. I'm not eager to waste another morning trying to figure out how, though.)
Even if it's tricky for people in developing nations to run a scam like this, there's a huge incentive to do so. In urban Nigeria, many people don't even make 60,000 naira per annum, which as I write this is only about $US400. A Nigerian who makes $US1200 a year is doing pretty well, so it's hardly surprising that there's so much enthusiasm about chopping that much and more out of some dumb Westerner's giant wallet.
(The BBC's recent three-part documentary "Welcome to Lagos" is, by the way, excellent.)
