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Saturday, August 21, 2010

My wife found a USPS Money Order fraud scheme...

So my wife answered a ad on craigslist for a nanny (she already takes care of one so she figures why not 1 more) so she answers this craigslist ad and answers something that looks promising and after answering calls and such she got this email

Hello,

I am so sorry to be getting back to you so late. I am really very glad and confident about your acceptance to help look after my angel. She's is all I have got in the world and I always look for the best for her and right now I believe you are the best candidate.So, no doubt,this will be a very symbiotic relationship between you and me.
You shall be working under a very conducive environment and like I said earlier,you shall have no work to do except to look after her, make sure she takes her meal,make sure she uses her meds, she never over plays, make her laugh and feel warm around you. You shall be working around 5 other workers. John is my chauffeur, he is from Brazil. Debby and Flora are the 2 caretaker for the house, they do all the house cleaning. Marcus is the house Gardner while Mother Angela is the house chef,who prepares the meal for the house. I want you to know that there are 3 cars and 1 SUV in the house to take you people around and John will always answer to you anytime you call on him. I believe this is a perfect working condition for you.

Please I have attached Aaliyah's picture for you to get familiar with her face and I want you to know that you shall have the opportunity to meet with her soon when she will be coming with her former caregiver and the driver. I guess by then you both will have enough to discuss.

I want to believe you have been looking forward to the 31st of this month just like I have been looking forward to it and so is my little angel Aaliyah as well.. I will like you to know at this point that one of my accountants just informed me that he has mailed out 2 money order to you in the amount of $780 each and so it will be $1580 in total, which was mailed via UPS courier with the tracking number [1Z82V03X0199112580 ] and which from the last time I checked should have delivered to your address by 10 am your Thursday morning. I believe by 10 to 11 am thursday your time, you must have the check in your possession.

I am very sorry about our previous agreement to meet Aaliyah. I want you to know that Aaliyah has flown out of the state since Thursday due to her health issues which was such an impromptu one. She needed to meet with a specialist in Antioch, California and even right now as I email you, She is still there but will be back on the morning of the 31st of July..

Now, I believe one of the virtues of a successful employee is the ability to listen and adhere strictly to instructions which is why I will be giving you a series of instructions this moment which I want you to strictly adhere to.

In your possession is money order which is the amount of $1580 and it is so because like I told you I need to include money for eventualities that might crop up during the period of your stay with her. I had instructed my accountant to send that amount and to my surprise,I never even knew Aaliyah will be visiting any specialist.

Now I want you to do a few things. First I will like you to immediately after reading this email, you should run right away to your bank and get the money orders cashed and go to any Money Gram outlet closest to you using the information below;

Name: PAtricia Inez Singh
Address: 3311 gentry town drive
City: Antioch
State:CA
Zip code: 94509

You will deduct part of your salary($500) from the $1580, and send $1000 to the specialist because you shall be needing some simple Health Aid kits for Aaliyah which the specialist recommended and already told me about. You need to do this very fast this morning so the kit can be shipped over to your address. You can go through the simple things,read through it and understand easily how to handle it.Immediately you are done doing that this morning I want you to have 1,000 usd sent via Money gram. I want you to make sure you have the 1,000 sent within now and the next 24 hours so that Aaliyah might be quickly discharged and can come home to meet you.. I want you to keep the remainder of the 80usd with you while you come to meet Aaliyah at home. That money should be with you in case any other thing crops up and if eventually nothing happens,you can use that as a payment bonus for yourself.

I am sure I have not yet communicated our location to you but from your possible guess, I believe you should know it is within a few mile radius from where you are(63 Saint Stephens School Rd, Austin TX). I want you to know that Aaliyah and I live in Austin. I want you to know that I have already arranged with the driver to come pick you from home on that 31st and also get to drop you. Now you need to mail me as well with the convenient place and time when you want the driver to come pick you everyday,whatever place and time you decide will be fully taken down by the driver.He will always be at your service and anytime you need to go out with Aaliyah to play or do anything, he shall always be there to take you people out. I want to believe this is very comfortable for you and will ensure you spend no dime on transportation or anything else..

Now, I believe you have read carefully what I have instructed you to do. So, go right now and have the check cashed at your bank and send me the details of transfer which should include Sender's full name, receiver's full names, 8 digit confirmation code(Reference Numbers) and also the amount sent. I will because of you come back here online 9pm(GMT) UK time to check for the details of the transfer so I can have it immediately sent over to the specialist's email and then those things can be bought and sent over to you. I also want you to email me all necessary details of transfer for the 1,000 which I believe you know you will be sending to the same person.That I believe I will come back tomorrow morning to check and have emailed to the specialist so Aaliyah can be discharged as quickly as possible.

Thank you so much for your patience,your time,your anticipated honesty and most especially,the love you have for my angel Aaliyah. I am very grateful and shall never forget.I will be back by 9pm today my time to check my email for the details I require of you.

Bye and have a great day,

Cole

You can see up above that they are pretty convincing... i was hoping they were real but after she checked a few places we found they were fakes, they used watermarks but it was the one for a dollar not the postal money order. The security strip is painted on and off in a dash not woven into the paper but there is some microprinting that looks pretty good...

My question is when it took her just a few min to find this why are there cops on facebook pretending to be 13yr olds trying to catch kids drinking when there are such bigger better scams to be going after

Friday, August 6, 2010

Looks like Twitter is now giving out suggestions of users to follow

UPDATE: Twitter announced it last week

so looks like this was released on twitter blog a week ago but im just now seeing it. What do people think? are there users who you actually ended up following? It may help to show the last 5 tweets for a user in suggestions list so you can see the type of messages they create

Original Post

So im not sure if its a beta or twitter has already rolled it out everywhere but it seems like they are now including suggestions in the sidebar. See my screenshots below

it looks alot like Facebook's suggestions but when you click it tells you a bit more and i was able to start to infer what is driving these recommendations.
you can see it has the "followed by" and then names of people you are already following, I guess the ideas is that if multiple friends are following someone then you are likely to find that person interesting aswell... is anyone else seeing this test going on? talk to me in the comments or on @cartercole