Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

« I Swear He's Not Dead | Main | A New Idea: A Creative Commons RevShare License »

September 27, 2006

New Email Scam Claims to Help Bridge the Digital Divide

Earlier today I received an email purporting to come from the "Bill Gates Foundation" (as opposed to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) saying that I'd just won 25,000 euros as part of a "lottery for Internet expansion in Africa." The email, composed in French, claims that that the so-called foundation had set up a lottery of "50,000,000 millions" euros - I'm not sure if that means 50 million or 50 trillion, though 50 trillion would certainly be more generous. For some reason, they claim that I'm getting a small chunk of this change, and somehow it'll help bridge the digital divide in Africa.

Unfortunately, they didn't transfer the money to my PayPal account. Instead, they said I needed to provide basic contact information, including my passport number and copies of any other pertinent ID card. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. ;-/

Here's the full text.

From: "BILL GATES FOUNDATION LOTTERY FOR INTERNET EXPANSION" To: andycarvin@yahoo.com Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 23:03:54 +0200 Subject: BILL GATES FOUNDATION LOTTERY

A votre aimable attention:
Nous avons le plaisir de vous annoncez que vous êtes l'un des heureux
gagnants de la :
BILL GATES FOUNDATION LOTTERY FOR INTERNET EXPANSION IN AFRICA,
dont le siège mondial pour l'Afrique se trouve à Paris.

Une loterie portant sur les adresses email des internautes africains.
La valeur totale en jeu est de 50.000 000 millions Euros et votre
adresse à été tiré au sort par sélection informatique lors de notre deuxième
tirage annuel effectué la semaine dernière au siège mondial sis à
Paris.
Vous faites donc partie des heureux gagnants et votre gain est de 250
000 Euros.

Pour entrer en possession de votre lot, veuillez adressez exclusivement
les informations suivant par email votre:
Nom:
Prénoms:
Adresse complète:
Numéro de téléphone:
Fax, email ainsi qu'une copie de votre carte nationale d'identité ou
passeport.
Après quoi il vous sera expliqué comment entrer en possession de votre
lot.
Recevez encore toutes nos félicitations

Isabelle Chevalier
Directrice des Opérations
BILL GATES FOUNDATION
12, Avenue Léonard de Vinci
92916 PARIS LA DEFENSE

Anyone else received this scam? I'm wondering if they're working their way through some digital divide-related mailing list. Either way, I've already forwarded a copy of it to the real Gates Foundation, in case they want to post something about it. -andy

Posted by acarvin at September 27, 2006 11:27 AM

Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article