Scams

We are all familiar, too familiar perhaps, with the so-called Nigerian scam. The spam email from a person somewhere in deepest West Africa, having a couple of million to burn following the "death" of an eminent person. And YOU of all people are the most trusted person on earth to receive all that cash. Only need to do is to divulge all your personal finance details - and you won't have a cent left.

I normally delete that sort of c**p as a matter of course. This morning, I received a novel and very sick version of this type of scam. I looked at the spam I had in my Hotmail account (you never know if something inadvertently gets sent there that should go into your Inbox) and found this message from a guy who had funds in a Swiss bank account belonging to a victim of the Holocaust.

Following World War II, thousands of Swiss bank accounts were left behind by those exterminated in Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution", and the Swiss had to be hauled over the coals to sort it out. The Claims Resolution Tribunal deals with claimants to these funds. My scammer, based in Russia, sought to phish some details on the back of this. He claims to be the chairman of the ICEP, the Independent Committee of Eminent Persons.

The CRT website carries a warning that spam, allegedly coming from an executive of the so-called ICEP, is in circulation.