I was going to start off today’s writing session with the latest Chick Fil-Audit but this story goes straight to the head of the queue.
It looks like the hoary old NIH scam is making the rounds again, this time with a twist of COVID-19 and exploiting Facebook’s lovely cross-app messaging feature with a fake Instagram profile.
Mind you, that profile looked pretty convincing with the image as long as you didn’t actually click on the profile details where you’d instantly see it was a new account with zero posts or followers.
And as it is recital season and the account was impersonating one of the dance moms I know from years ago when Katie and her daughter were at the same studio, I didn’t really think at the time that I was dealing with a compromised account.
But it became clear very soon afterward…
Given auto-correct stupidity, I didn’t catch the first typo which is usually the dead giveaway you’re dealing with someone for whom English is not their native language and is potentially indicative of a scam.
I didn’t catch the one I made either so I guess that’s a fair cop… 😉
But it’s the next message that made it crystal clear there was a scam in progress:
There’s more than a few problems here:
- “Department of National institute of health (NIH)” (sic) does not actually exist. It’s the National Institutes of Health which is a constituent agency of the Federal Department of Health and Human Services.
- The Federal Government would hardly partner with itself to create any programme as implied in the first part of the first sentence.
- Even if NIH had such a scheme in play, there’s no way anyone with a pulse wouldn’t have been aware of massive amounts of money for “free” if for no other reason than NIH would have been spamming the airwaves with advertisements of their awesomeness and generosity. Any legitimate grants from a government agency have to be authorised/appropriated in law by Congress and that information concerning the grant is available to the public.
- And most worrying of all…yes, I do remember when “Smokey & The Bandit” came out in theatres 45 years ago. It’s one of the few movies my father and I actually attended in the cinema…and then went back to the ticket booth for another helping with some of his friends from the lake out in the boonies of Hope Mills we’d hang out at! Damn, I’m seriously feeling it now… 😉
Now I’m going to have some fun to see just how effective their shucking and jiving is by pretending to play along…
At this point, I was figuring the scammer would give up when I asked after a website because I’d already searched both NIH and DHHS with no hint of any programme that sounded anything like this.
I’ll give them credit for trying the “some people apply without tangible reason and some apply twice” which at least has the ring of truth.
Bill Maher in his latest episode of “Real Time” in fact pointed out that of the five major COVID legislative giveways, all of them were pretty badly fraud-ridden with the worst example being one address getting $2M in disbursements!
I tried to give them a graceful way of leaving the conversation with their dignity intact when I asked if this was a private company and they completely biffed that response.
They couldn’t possibly believe that I’m believing one word they’re saying at this point and I’m ready to pull the ripcord on the conversation and report/block the scammer until they sent me this:
Wow.
That’s a pretty impressive prop to try to perpetuate a scam they have to know has completely failed at this point based on questions and not really jumping at their “offer”.
Lófaszt, nehogy már!
These people want me to seriously believe that they got mailed $80K US in a paper sack from the United States Government?!?
There’s a few problems with that idea:
- If you’re going to imply the government mailed that cash to you, at least have the good graces to use USPS envelopes/packaging as a prop!
- The USPS may well deliver a parcel full of cash and it’s certainly not illegal to send cash through the post, the parcel would be subject to being x-rayed and would likely arouse their suspicion and only $50K could be insured. And unless it is sent First Class, the postal inspectors would not need a warrant to open such a package (not that a warrant on a suspicious package of cash would be hard for the postal inspectors to obtain!).
- A legitimate grant from a government agency would *NEVER* *EVER* be sent in the form of cash, particularly such a massive amount that would have to be accounted for in the accounting ledgers and proper recording of potential income to the IRS. Also, it would be sent as a check likely drawn directly from the US Treasury as the stimulus checks were last year.
- There is *NO WAY* that amount of cash would move anywhere without at least one Form 8300 being generated and sent to the IRS. It would be subject to seizure and civil forfeiture if it were not properly documented on that form. Obviously, the scammers wouldn’t fill out that form but your bank certainly would if you tried depositing all of that at once (the reporting threshold is $10K) and were you to try to slip it into your accounts bit-by-bit, your bank would probably notice that pattern and narc on you with a Form 8300 to cover their ass.
It probably didn’t help their cause that YouTube has been serving up a fair helping of “Border Security: International” which follows Canadian border agents who routinely question people coming into the country with large amounts of cash they can’t explain and then boot them out as inadmissible to Canada for trafficking in currency of dubious origin. So I’ve already been seeing plenty of attempts at money laundering and smuggling… 🙂
So why I don’t see how far they’ll go when I send some warm and fuzzy BS in their direction and then accuse them of money laundering without actually coming out and using that exact phrase?
Ah…the push to action after another attempt from them to convince me that somehow the NIH is not actually a constituent part of the federal government.
This is when I reported/blocked the account and then found another Instagram message request from a new account from a couple of days ago which I didn’t wait to report, block, and then toss into the bin.
The scumbags are getting better, folks!
But the language barrier and the “too good to be true” sniff test will foil them pretty much every time provided you keep your wits about yourself and don’t give them any information they can use to rip you off or hurt you.
Definitely be wary of texts/EMAILs/DMs that come out of the blue and don’t trust them until you can verify the other end is legitimate. This is particularly true on social media sites where it is too easy for the bad guys to get enough information to appear convincing.
And by all means, do not under any circumstances give them your banking information or other details or send them any money whatsoever.
If you know someone who is vulnerable (particularly the elderly who may not be as well versed in computers and the Internet), please do help them to be able to tell the scams from legitimate communications and have them run suspicious things past you for a sniff test.
They’re getting good enough to make those of us who live with computers second guess ourselves. The elderly won’t have a chance against a determined scammer!
