Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Notice from Department of the Treasury (Spam)

This is the latest spam to arrive in many email boxes. You may assume this is actually from "Department of the Treasury" and decide to open the email. Please note a few important things before you do so. The text of the message appears below:

1. The email will not be addressed to you at any of your email addresses. My mail filter offered to bounce the message back to the sender if I let it know what email address I wanted it bounced from. Good luck with that.
2. The Department of the Treasury does not send emails to private individuals. They adore paperwork and will kill trees first.
3. The Internal Revenue Service does not send emails to you letting you know that you have a tax refund. They adore paperwork too and will kill trees first.
4. The letter from Mr. John Stewart is written so badly, he would have never passed the Civil Service exam. And the spammer forgot to spell check and remove his texting.
5. I have no idea what happens if you click on the "click here" link, but it can't be good.

Text of email

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity
we have determined that you are eligible to receive
a tax refund under section 501(c) (3) of the
Internal Revenue Code. Tax refund value is $189.60.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days
in order to IWP the data received.
If u don't receive your refund within 9 business
days from the original IRS mailing date shown,
you can start a refund trace online.
If you distribute funds to other organization, your records must show wether
they are exempt under section 497 (c) (15). In cases where the recipient org.
is not exempt under section 497 (c) (15), you must have evidence the funds will
be used for section 497 (c) (15) purposes.

If you distribute fund to individuals, you should keep case histories showing
the recipient's name and address; the purpose of the award; the maner of
section; and the realtionship of the recipient to any of your officers, directors,
trustees, members, or major contributors.
To access the form for your tax refund, please click here.

This notification has been sent by the Internal Revenue Service,
a bureau of the Department of the Treasury.
Sincerely Yours,

John Stewart
Director, Exempt. Organization
Rulings and Agreements Letter
Internal Revenue Service

6 comments:

  1. Very innovative scam e-mail but, I fail to understand how the author benefits?

    Can you figure it out?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's a phishing attempt. He will get your name, address and SS number to steal your identity and get credit in your name. It will take you years and a lot of $ to repair the damage to your credit history.

    FWIW the 501 (c) 3 code he mentioned is the one governing non profit organizations not individuals.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The misspellings would be my first clue. These people seem completely incapable of spell checking. The use of "u" for you in one line, and "wether" for whether in another make it obvious that this is not an official message. It amazes me how stupid some of these people are. Then again, even officials can make mistakes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Most email clients will identify these types of emails as "scams". By clicking on the underlined or highlighted reference it will take you to a fake site whereupon they will ask you for information you should not be giving to ANYbody. If you do then you get what you deserve...and it won't be pleasant.
    These scams are no different than a host of others. They prey on the ignorant.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I recieved this email shortly after filing this years return. It appeared in my main email account and was caught by my spam blocker. I figured it was pfishing and ditched it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gotta love that unintentional spam humor. I just got that identical "notice" this week. Of course people should ask themselves why they're being told about a "third" refund, when they've already gotten their fed and state tax ones. I'd also ask about the fake "John Stewart" nickname - is he moonlighting from the Daily Show? And I'd also want to know why the US Treasury wants you to click on a link instead containing the name EUROnet! Oops!

    ReplyDelete