Email Scam Reloaded

I have not been receiving any scam email for some time. Finally got last week. This one spoofed to be from the director of United Nations Compensation Commission.

- Extracted from the Scam mail -

From: Jeffrey S. Mears
To: brady@pisem.net
Subject: Swift Transafer Notification

Jeffrey S. Mears Director,
United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC)
3 Vivian Avenue, London SW1Y 4TE
London UK
We need to confirm from you if JP Morgan Chase NA, London UK has credited your
account, with the approved amount of US$18Million dollars as
instructed by United Nations and African Union.
The African Union and UN has instructed for an immediate transfer to all
beneficiaries who has an outstanding payment to collect

We will be obliged to confirm from you if you have received the money from our
corresponding bank the JP Morgan Chase NA London UK,
to enable us close your file and put our record straight.

Thanks for the anticipated cooperation.

Jeffrey S. Mears Director,
United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC)
3 Vivian Avenue, London SW1Y 4TE
London UK

- End of Email -

The letter may looks genuine to many, but it gives alot of tell-tale sign that it is actually a scam mail.

Firstly, the mail was send "To:" some unknown email instead of your own email address. for this case, "To:" field is to "brady@pisem.net".

Secondly, the sender is suppose to be "Jeffrey S. Mears" of the United Nations Compensation Commission. But the "From:" field is from "wangqm@im.ac.cn", which the domain is not from UN.org.



From the Mail header, the mail seems to be coming from "mail.im.ac.cn" and the message body was not in plain text but encoded.



Checking on the "mail.im.ac.cn", it is actually from the email system of the "Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Science" in China. Seems that the user "Wangqm" account was being hacked and used by the scammer.