Monday, December 23, 2013

Scamsters Getting Nastier

Usually, here are your airline tickets (open the attached zip file which self-extracts a virus), or here are the details of how you have $2.3 million in the Irish Lottery (ditto).  But here's a new one, designed to scare the wits out of people who don't realize that you don't get served with orders to appear by email.  Where appeals to greed seem not to be working, here is an appeal to fear:
Notice to Appear,
Hereby you are notified that you have been scheduled to appear for your hearing thatwill take place in the court of Washington in January 19, 2014 at 09:00 am.
Please bring all documents and witnesses relating to this case with you to Court on your hearing date.
The copy of the court notice is attached to this letter.Please, read it thoroughly.
Note: If you do not attend the hearing the judge may hear the case in your absence.
Yours truly,Lisa TailorClerk to the Court.
Like all of these scams, there are multiple warning signs:

1. Washington State would not have a court.  King County in Washington would have a court.

2. Slightly tortured sentence structure and capitalization errors hint that whoever wrote this is not a native speaker of English.

3. How many people with the surname of "Taylor" spell it like the occupation?

7 comments:

  1. What about sending summons via email. Never heard of that and don't believe any court does. It has to be delivered by a process server or via traceable postal mail.

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  2. 3. According to the Census Bureau, about 25,000 of them in the US.

    Admittedly, far fewer than use "Taylor".

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  3. Plus, the federal courts DO have a system of sending notices to parties via E-mail, but not until AFTER you are served with notice of the existence of the lawsuit and the obligation to answer.

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  4. The one I received was sent by Support.1@Jonesday.com. Yup, don't think so.

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  5. the one I received was from nancy tailor and when I sent the header/body info to spamcop.net it came back as coming from abuse@verizonwireless.com

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  6. Courts never send a Notice to Appeal or any other official court notice/document through an email. Formal notices are served by a process server. Official notices contain the type of court (judicial circuit, district court, etc.), the name of the county and state, your full name & address. There is no such thing as "Clerk to the Court." There is a Clerk of the Court, but the Clerk does not issue notices to appear.

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  7. I got the same email except mine was for the court of Louisiana. It really made me giggle.

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