Fighting cybercons

Today, my husband got what would have been a fairly garden variety Nigerian scam email -- except for the twist that the writer claimed to be an English barrister representing the estate of a wealthy American who was killed along with his wife and their only child in the London bomb blasts of July 7, 2005. And (our correspondent explains in his own way) a nasty old UK bank is threatening to confiscate the money in the estate if he, the well-meaning barrister, doesn't find the next of kin, and he can't find them, and would we consent to stepping forward as next of kin for 40 percent of the fortune of 18 million pounds? So the money can be repatriated? With proper legal safeguards provided for our considerate selves, of course. It's a "Risk free business relationship." All the deadline-challenged barrister needs is our "honest co-operation." (And a host of personal information...)

As scams go, this one is particularly clunky. The English stinks. The proposal stinks worse. I'm an Anglophile of sorts, so I take this affront against the UK semi-personally. And even if I weren't fond of England I like to think I know the indecency of using terrorist attacks for fun and profit.

Luckily for us -- and I hope unluckily for the underhanded, shameless criminal who cooked up this scheme -- we know where to report stuff like this.