Scam Alert : James Holland, targeting Photographers

Posted on April 16, 2012 by niko

Three cheers for Chris Chernoff in Vancouver, who just spotted and notified us of the latest “Nigerian prepayment” email scam, targeting wedding vendors.

James Holland <james_holland2010@yahoo.com>

Hello, 

How are you doing? fine i guess ..i just want to confirm if you will be available on this date 12th of may 2012 in  your calender for our wedding photograph. if yes kindly get back to us asap.

…
By now you know how this works, yes? Overpayment, with some sort of international money-order (which will eventually fail to clear) + “oops, sorry, I paid too much, please refund $xxx to this address” etc etc..

There is one of them going around, like a bad flu! every month. z

  • The email addresses are usually yahoo.com or hotmail.com
  • The names are “generic” English.
  • The  language is both strangely formal and clumsy at the same time
  • The details tend to be vague, as if the person has no real knowledge of local geography..
niko

About niko

Nicholas ("everyone calls me 'Niko'" ) Lourotos is an original founder and the managing partner of Bridal Network Inc. (2001) He launched the first online wedding directory in Canada in 1995 (remember? when we still used modems!) and has happily remained in this space ever since. These days, he prefers to be called the "Network Manager". A suitably vague job description which allows him to float a lot, talk to people a lot, go to lunch a lot, brainstorm a lot and blog a lot - and generally oversee the network and try to keep his finger on the pulse of the industry.
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