Having just received this email appeal from Isle of Wight Councillor Geoff Lumley who apparently is stranded in Kuala Lumpur, we think we can assume his email account has been hacked.
Update: see comment below…
Hi,
Apologies for having to reach out to you like this, but I made a quick trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and had my bag stolen from me with my passport and credit cards in it. The embassy is willing to help by authorizing me to fly without my passport, I just have to pay for a ticket and settle Hotel bills. Unfortunately, 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 money to me. You can reach me via my alternate email geofflumleyxxxx or hotel’s desk phone, +xxxxxxxx waiting for response.
Best Regards
Geoff Lumley
Have your say.
Alan from New Zealand comments:
You may be interested to know that I received an identical email (word for word the same) purporting to be from a friend of mine in Bedford (I live in New Zealand as you can tell from my email address). So it looks like this scam is pretty widespread; perhaps a lot of people’s email accounts have been hijacked?
I have been unable to find any other references to the scam, so it is probably quite a new one. And perhaps it only involves UK accounts since the only incidents (so far) appear to be from the UK.
Update from Geoff Lumley 15/01/2011
You will have received a scam email on Wednesday 5th January at about 10.52 purportedly from me claiming that I was stranded in Kuala Lumpa. THIS email account was hacked a couple of hours prior to that and the hackers sent that email to everyone in my Address Book. I am really sorry that this happened and I hope that you were not too inconvenienced.
It was a salutary lesson to me that one should never take at face value anything received by email, no matter how familiar it may look. Perhaps a lesson for all who use email as intensively as I ?
I have now rescued this email account and now have access to the complete Address Book. Some of you have been contacted by me previously on my new email account, but I am sending this out to ensure that EVERYONE knows that I was hacked and I have changed email address.
Iwill no longer be using the hacked email address and can now be contacted on ….
If anyone has sent me an email in the last few weeks to which they are awaiting a reply more useful than an initial acknowledgement, please re-send the original email to my new email address.
Once again my sincere apologies.
Geoff Lumley
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