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Jonathan Smiles - contacting you for something that will be of great interest/benefit to you as regards a deceased relative of yours. Email Scam - A Scammer Wants Your Money

Email Scams: "contacting you for something that will be of great interest/benefit to you as regards a deceased relative of yours."
From: Jonathan Smiles

Did you receive an email from someone claiming to be "Jonathan Smiles" and saying "contacting you for something that will be of great interest/benefit to you as regards a deceased relative of yours."?

"kindly get back to me as quickly as possible for disclosure of further details." 

Here it is, below. The scammer will try to get you to either send him money to cover taxes, handling, shipping fees, whatever he thinks you will believe, or he will send you a cashier's check, and you only have to send him some money back (by way of a Western Union Moneygram or similar iretrievable, untraceable wire transfer) after you deposit the check in your account.  Of course, it will bounce weeks later, and you will be left paying the bank back or going to jail for fraud.

Jonathan Smiles (not his real name, obviously) hopes to con you into sending money for various "fees" to free the fortune.  If you would like a step by step explanation of how this type of "Advance Fee Fraud" works, click here!

Also see these pages:

• Explanation of so-called "Nigerian" business deal and money scams
• What to do if you think you have been the victim of a scam
• How to report a scam
• Other similar scams

Scammers have become more slick over the years; there are fewer  typos, obvious gramatical and syntatical errors  some of the other obvious signs that this is a scam are poor spelling , use of free Yahoo/Hotmail/etc email accounts, proposals that make no sense, etc.:

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Scam email:

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Smiles <tuomo.rusanen@pp.inet.fi>
Sent: Tue, Apr 30, 2013 8:38 am
Subject: Attention Please!!

Good day,

My name is Jonathan Smiles, i am a consultant to a prime financial organization 

here in London United Kingdom, apologies for the informal manner of contact, but 

considering the urgency of the situation there was no other way, i am contacting 

you for something that will be of great interest/benefit to you as regards a 

deceased relative of yours.

Please if you are the actual owner of this email address, kindly get back to me 

as quickly as possible for disclosure of further details.

Regards,

Jonathan Smiles

Tel: 00 44 703 5943537.

 

 

And another version of the scam:

note the different email address, but same UK phone number.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Smiles [mailto: tapani.mattila@pp1.inet.fi] 
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 8:44 PM
Subject: Attention Please!!

 

Good day,

 

My name is Jonathan Smiles, i am a consultant to a  prime financial organization here in London England. Apologies for the informal manner of contact to you, but considering the urgency of the situation there was no other way, i am contacting you for something that will be of great interest/benefit to you as regards a deceased relative of yours.

 

Please if you are the actual owner of this email address, kindly get back to me as quickly as possible for disclosure of further details.

 

 

Regards,

Jonathan Smiles

Tel: 00 44 703 5943537.

 

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For a comprehensive list of national and international agencies to report scams, see this page.