I am hereby cautioning the general public, DNO viewers and readers, their friends and family to be on the lookout for email fraud, hackers and scammers.
I recently received a telephone call from a friend asking where I was and if everything was “OK” with me. My response was, “Oh yes I am fine!” And then, she informed me of an email that she received from me asking for money. See below:
From: [email protected]
Subject: PLEASE I NEED YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 15:07:51 +0000
Hello
Apologies for having to reach out to you like this, I made a trip to Scotland,UK and had my bag stolen from me with my passport, cell phone and credit cards in it. The embassy is willing to help by letting me fly without my passport, I just have to pay for a ticket and settle Hotel bills. Unfortunately for me, I can’t have access to funds without my credit card, I’ve made contact with my bank but they need more time to come up with a new one. I was thinking of asking you to lend me some quick funds that I can give back as soon as I get in.
I really need to be on the next available flight
I can forward you details on how you can get the funds to me.
You can reach me via email or Queens hotel’s desk phone,
(+44) 702 408 2584.
I await your response…
ELTON LETANG
Many other calls and emails followed, even frightening my own family and friends in Dominica wanting to know if I was secure and OK. I again calm them and reassured them that I was fine and it was just that my email account was hacked. I immediately to try to reach everyone in my contact list but could not, since I had exceeded the amount of emails sent out per day (thanks to the hackers).
One of my friends who knew it was fraud responded to the hackers (email below):
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: PLEASE I NEED YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 19:27:53 +0000
but Elton you not in Boston nuh? How u in Boston and London at the same time?
forward me the details papa
I waiting
The response of the hackers is below:
From: Elton Letang <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thu, Oct 6, 2011 19:41:55 GMT+00:00
Subject: RE: PLEASE I NEED YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE
Hi Henie, thanks for the response.
HERE ARE THE INFO YOU NEED FOR WESTERN UNION.
My name has it appears on my TEMPORARY ID is ELTON LETANG has you know.
ADDRESS: 23 Nicholson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland
COUNTRY: SCOTLAND, UK.
Please i need 1550US$ to cover my expenses.
Thanks, i know i can always count on you.
Again, I caution the general public to be diligent and alert when opening and responding to emails.
my boy these things goes on all the time. i got this same letter one time. you just have to pay no mind to these things and you will be ok.
I’m so sleepy…
Some of these people that comment here have nothing to do! He is simply saying do not send money, cause it’s a trick. Some people just take the story on a different tangent.
This is international people. People read this everywhere.
Some of us just use this site to showcase our “poverty of thinking”!
Some of you are to quick to post some stupid comments. Elton is just telling his friends not too send money to thoes scammers…
I cant believe this is news……anyone should recognise this as junk mail, not hacking, and simply delete. To even send this to DNO shows a level of misunderstanding that I cannot comprehend.
Your PC was not hacked, you received junk mail and open it..straight up….sometime we wonder why our PC got infected with viruses that’s partly the reason…opening junk….period..
I received one of these emails from some one telling me that gunmen had shot his parents and they had left a large fortune………..
My response was; the gumen should have shot you as well.
IMPORTANT NOTICE; The email doesn’t seem to be hacked but rather, the email address in question was simply copied and slightly modified. Elton’s email address is natureisland_boy@ while the scam email’s address is natureisland-boy@… (the main difference being the underscore vs the hyphen)
Additionally, there are virus programs which can capture your email contact list with consummate ease. The two put together are a recipe for disaster. People just need to be observant n cautious in instances like these. Never Never respond to such emails without verifying the identity of the sender.
I have received emails of this nature several times in the last 3-4 years but on each occasion, I recognized that they could not have come from the persons whose name they were carrying. Sometimes it was simply by the way they addressed me. Sometimes the faulty grammar and spelling (not just typographical errors) gave them away. Otherwise, I checked through a third party who knew the friend from whom the email had supposedly come.
Elton, get a gmail address from Google, you cannot have more protection to email address, than from Google’s gmail. Believe me I know.
Some of you behave like secret agents, what is in an Email….mostly boyfriend telling his his/boy friend hi whats up? petty email…why would someone want to do with a foolish love letter…..
In a day like today where every child knows about computer, we are informed enough to delete junk mail…common sense…..this has nothing what so ever to do with harking, junk mail that’s all….
You open at your own risk…or filter junk mail. from your inbox..
You should have given them you account account ######….haven’t you gotten this email where you, win x amount of lbs from the UK, and in order to claim your winnings you have to PAY x amount? that is not new…..
pure foolishness…
delete junk mail…don’t open..
DNO i see that as a form of In-equality. Had my email address been hacked would you have posted my delima on a news website? Furthermore, what is Elton good for? If Elton is so worthy of this page then he should probabably own his own website instead of using hotmail like poor people like me. Even myself know that hotmail is by far the most “hack-able” ESP and therefore do NOT use it. haha
ADMIN: If your email was hacked and you sent us the story, of course we would publish it. You haven’t, so how can it be inequality? it appears you are bored and just wanted to post a dumb comment.
Elton, this is called spam email. You opened junk mail and as a result yoour email was infested. Your contacts were cc. Note to self. Do not open emails from unrecognized senders.
That madam/sir, is not junk mail: It is as real as they come, I personally get many of those every other day, which appears to be coming from people I know.
The crooks have many times contacted me; even using familiar names such as the Dominica, priest know as father Cuffy, asking me to send him seven hundred pounds: he is stock in Ireland, where he was robbed, and his passport, and all his money was stolen.
Mr. Cuffy, had to change his E-mail address because of that. I mentioned Cuffy’s name because he is more known in Dominica, and you can ask him aboutit as to whether he was hacked or not, in order to verify I am not lying about it.
The most recent one I got is supposedly to be from ([email protected]), that E-mail belongs to a member of the Dominica police Force, known to me as Ainsworth Irish, that E-mail is no longer used by Irish, since I think it now belongs to the one who has impersonated him.
I was told the same story ” he got robbed in Ireland, and an address was given to me where I should send him some ridiculous amount of money.
So, whereas Letang might be making too big an issue out of it, the scam is run on the unsuspecting everyday.
I have a Dominica friend in Canada, who was robbed in a similar scam, it is real, and not simply junk mail as you term it.
Fact is they may not be actually hacking into one E-mail directly, however, the people such as I who like to blog, are vulnerable to that sort of thing, one simply have to be guarded at all times.
Francisco Etienne-Dods Telemaque
Maybe if you Telemaque learned to take your time and read you would have understood what Steve was sayin. He did not say that this mail was a junk mail. He was simply saying that Letang may have opened junk mail which allowed his address book to be copied to the hacker for use. Maybe you can talk less and read more. lol
oook…@ executive command wats with thomas letang’s email account???
#curious
I once received an e-mail similar to this. I informed the sender that I was sending the money and gave him a time to collect it at western Union. I even gave him my cell number. He kept on calling me and I always had a better way of convincing him that he should now go and collect the money. After receiving another call from him I told him I was trying to see how fast I could finish his sole of his shoes by he making numerous trips to western Union. IDIOT
lolol!!
THAT WAS A GOOD ONE!!
WHAT THE PROBLEM D.N.O WITH MY POST,TRYING TO TRACK MY IDENTITY ? CAN GIVE IT TO YOU IF YOU NEED IT.
I AM SORRY THERE IS A SPY ALREADY SO THE EMAIL RE THE EMAIL AND F.B HACKING IS FROM SPY 2
MY APOLOGIES.
I AM SO THANKFUL THAT I DON’T HAVE ANSWER TO MAN BUT JESUS,
WE ARE SO CHILDISH IN OUR THOUGHTS THAT WE THINK SOMETHINGS ARE IMPOSSIBLE
This is very sad but sooo true. I recieved an email in march of 2011,stating that had requested 10 thousand dollars to help me with medical cost. I AM INDEED IN A SITUATION REQURING FINANCIAL HELP TO FACILITATE MY RECOVERY FROM AN INJURY BUT AT NO TIME DID I EVER SEND OUT ANY EMAIL MAKNIG ANY REQUEST.IALSO RECIEVED ABOUT 2 CALL INFORMING TO SEND THE MONEY VIA WESTERN UNION.
A FEW WEEKS AGO I REALIZED SOME HAD HIJACKED MY FB ACCOUNT CHANGED MY PASS WORD AND WAS USING IT AS A TOOL OF INSULTS.I WAS NOTIFIED OF SOME CHANGE IN PASSWORD IN MAY OF 2011 BUT REALLY MADE NOTHING OF IT UNTIL.I SAW WHAT WAS GOING OUT. AND WAS DEVASTATED.
Hey NAME REMOVED FOR PRIVACY. THIS IS A MESSAGE I RECEIVED
If you did not change your password, your account may have been the victim of a phishing scam. Please follow the link to regain control over your account:
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
NOW BECAUSE IT WAS MY NAME AND MY ACCOUNT AND SOME PEOPLE DIDN’T BELIEVE ME I SEND OUT THIS LETTER
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 4:26 PM
TO ALL WHO MAY HAVE BEEN AFFECTED. I WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS MY SINCERE AND DEEPEST APOLOGY TO ALL PERSONS WHO READ A FACE BOOK PAGE DUBBED
R .C {SCOPION QUEEN}
MY ACCOUNT WAS CREATED C.R , FOR THE PURPOSE OF PLAYING FARMVILLE A GAME USED AS DIVERSIONAL THERAPY. I OBSERVED CHANGES IN MY ADDRESS
BOOK AND THE STRANGE ADDITION A POLITICAL FIGURES, WHICH CONCERNED ME. IN ADDITION TO THAT SIMPLE COMMENTS WERE EXAGGERATED, SOMETIMES DIRECTED
AT NURSES, AT SOME POINT TO VIEW MY PAGE I HAD TO ACCESS FROM SOMEONE ELSE PAGE.
AGAIN I AM DEEPLY SORRY FOR HURT CAUSED TO THE NURSES AT CASUALTY AND ANY OTHER PERSONS THAT MAY have been BE HURT
This is the second facebook account that have been hijacked.
thanks for understanding
deepest apology C.R
like u no one believed me but the crime is real sometimes really hard to detect. i am a witness and a victim at the same time.
this doesn’t even sound real..
That letter was in the news lol… long time ago…. they did say to not to answer to it and don’t believe it…that’s why MSN has a new poicy where you change your password every 72 days
Watch Datelineon MSNBC,these scammers are very clever but not clever enough fore Dateline
Oooops typo,should read Dateline (on) and (for) dateline
This scam is old, and lots of people all over the world get suck into it by sending info. These are most times hacked in UK, Nigeria, Canada, USA etc..
What you need to do to safe guard your email and private info, is to change your pass word every two months. Do not put only letters, make a mixture of letters and numbers, so the hackers cannot figure it out. They trace your movement online and send fishing emails to get info from you. Do not open emails if you do not know the sender, especially when the subject line is blank.
These scams do not come from Dominica.
dat i checking der… besides real people don’t talk like that…so u mean to tell me u go and stay in a hotel 1000 something and you cyah pay does people back? u order food and all dem things der and u no ur money got stolen and u still spending on all dat money?
Sorry to hear what happened to u, but u are not the first, nor will u be the last person that this happened to..happened to persons here in Antigua too…
Geez people, get on with it already. This scam has been going on for years….where are you guys, in the dark ages? lol. This is nothing new. Just because the guy whose email got hacked is Dominican doesn’t mean the hacker is in Dominica. It’s a global world people, be vigilant and smart. Just think about it, if someone who is supposedly your friend got stranded in Scotland and needs immediate assistance, would he/she send you an email asking for assistance, knowing that it is likely it could be days before you check email. Also, if your friend traveled to Scotland, wouldn’t he/she have a return ticket? Why would he/she need money to buy a ticket?
checking eh…
Some years aback, someone send a letter from spain telling me that i won 800,000 euros and they need a certain amount of money to do all the transactions.I told them, seeing that you have so much money for me, take some and do everything you have to do, then take some for your self and send the rest for me.
Ha ha ha.. Nice reply
Sorry I meant to Like and not dislike.. OOOps sorry it is like
Yes this the appropriate way to answer – Soo much money then take your fees and send me the rest also take some for yourself. Hahahaa
I got the exact same email from a friend who lives in England but immediately deleted it.
You can trace the email by logging on to
http://www.ip-address.com
Whoever is perpetrating this in Dominica is not only an idiot but a scamming scamp.So far I know of three prominent Dominicans’ e-mail addresses being hacked like this. Even father Cuffy has been embarrassed this way, also supposedly finding himself in dire straits in Scotland. The story line is always the same. One would expect this in Nigeria, not here and the police should investigate to establish who is behind this.
Please, any other Dominicans who have been victim of this should report the details at once to the authorities.
“Expect this in Nigeria?”?? The scam artist dont need to stay in Nigeria alone to do this.They can even be right here in Dominica. Do you know we also have alot of Africans leaving here. NOt that am saying it could be them either. This happens worldwide…and from any location worldwide…Dominica is no exception. And the sad thing is that if the scammer sends at least 100 of these messages …maybe 1 or 2 persons responds by sending money and they have gotten you! Be alert people!
lol we are africans
Hi my email was also hacked into and i am not in Dominica we have to be careful who we add as friends even on facebook trust me
But who told you the person who did this is in d/ca or from d/ca.These things happen all over the world everyday.
Boy Elton I tell U already…I send de money for them people…I try calling you and u didnt respond …so U owe me bro…I will send u my account information in your imbox now that u are well and in good health so u can send me back my money…
NS.
looloLOLOLLOLOlololoLOLOLOlololo
you are gross and wicked you are trying to get me too. you are a hacker
who is the hacker??? tell me please, I’m not a crook….
Sorry you had to go through that but I had to LMBO at the message saying “forward me the details papa”. Seriously though, this is crazy! I use my email accounts for business etc so I will surely pay more attention in the future. Thanks for the headsup.
I know how it feels brother. I got a call from my brother in DA asking where I was too. I got calls from Canada, the US,Thailand and my work place. No one could understand how I went to Scotland when I had just gone home from work and was expected to report the day after. It was scary but the hackers lost. People did reply but then the bad use of the other language I speak made them realise it was not me. Two weeks later on my way home in a ferry I got a text message from England saying that my facebok account was hacked.
How bad can it get?!!!
Wow…This is very serious..i hope ppl on his contact list read this and try contacting him b4 doing anything foolish…REAL REAL TALK
you mean people still use email for sending messages? the only use email has now is for signing up for accounts lolol
i wish you knew how IDIOTIC you sound!
SMDH!!!!
wow you should report that to the FBI,i got a flyer in my mail box one time asking to report any cumputor frauds or anyone trying to skim for money or sell you anything that you dim as suspect.
thanks for posting elton
LOLOLOLOL well yahhhhhh the intelligence war…. welcome to the AGE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. THOMAS LETANG EMAIL THEY HAD TO HACK WE