I don't get very many 'share the wealth' scam emails, but get several 'take me on as a client' scam emails every day. The "client" is always from Asia -- China usually, but sometimes Japan or, more rarely, Malaysia.
I get bunches of solicitations for journal articles. I think many of them are for real open-access journals but the incentives to try to sort that out are nil.
About the marks of the Nigerian scammers, I wonder how people that gullible have any money left? I would have figured that some American company would have legally taken their money already.
I've noticed that the volume of invitations to the famous conference in Dubai has fallen off lately.
Emails asking me to "confirm my scheduled talk" at conferences in China that I've never heard of are up, however.
I get dubious conference invites but I'm not important enough for somebody to scam me by saying I am to give a talk.
1.last: I wonder if those resemble the "take me on as a student" or "take me on as a summer intern" emails I get (mostly from India, but sometimes from China or Taiwan).
I got a phishing email yesterday with the subject line, "Adumbrating you have unread message that will be deleted in 3 days assigners." Hmm, fancy college word, could be from Zuckerberg himself. Better click on this link pronto!
6 The lawyer scam is quite well tailored. It's a breach of contract case, they send you a bad check for the retainer, and then, within 30 days, the purported target of the breach of contract suit sends you a bad check for the amount due on the contract, and the client demands payment of the proceeds less your fee. Formally, it's indistinguishable from a legitimate engagement, and they don't suck you in by playing to greed, but by trying to seem ordinary.
The usual opening email is simply 'Does your firm handle breach of contract cases?' to which, for a great many lawyers, the answer is going to be yes, what sort of contract do you have.
3. We live in a country where a large percentage of poor people vote for Republicans, partly because of their economic policies. I'm fairly certain gullible people as a general group have enough money that this will never stop being a viable income stream.
OT, except lawyers: my MIL's landlord is sort of your classic small time, mildly shitty type, and he recently decided he wants her out (partly so he can charge someone else much more, partly because there was a plumbing problem* and he discovered that she's a hoarder). So, because he's shitty**, he's going about it shittily, and of course she's taking this very personally. Miraculously, this hasn't spiraled into a mental health crisis, and she's been pretty proactive about dealing with it, so thank God.
Anyway, the landlord sued her for $6000 in property damages (she hasn't moved out yet; this is purely imaginary, just a way to intimidate her). She got a lawyer, they went to court, and the judge said, "You have no basis for these damages, and you can't double her rent to force her out, and you can't evict her with 14 days' notice. She can stay at her old rent until she finds someplace new." So she basically wins on every front, but in her mind, it's a mixed decision, because what she really wanted was for the judge to tell the landlord he's a bad man. It's maddening that she can look at such a clear victory and yet find a downside.
*not her fault, and kind of mysterious; a pipe burst inside the house, despite the heat being on
**during the plumbing situation, there was this whole nonsense with him claiming she wouldn't return his calls, when of course the reverse was true, and he called a cop for some reason. The cop's on the phone with MIL and says, "I know ma'am, I've dealt with this guy before." So he's such a shitty landlord that the cops know him to be so.
Are they suggesting trying another African nation because Nigeria is too obvious but another nation would still capture the suckers?
WHO WANTS TO WIRE MUTOMBO?
11: My recollection was that we were discussing how mind-bogglingly-stupid some of the right-wing political fundraising appeals were and then you commented that the article linked in the OP (TALITOP) provided a plausible explanation.
11,14: My searches not turning it up, however.
I'm seeing a fairly hefty increase in completely unintelligible spam. As in text obviously generated by a really poor context-free grammar engine, containing no URL or other come-on that makes any sense. A lot of them come from hijacked IP address space, but some of it is from China.
At first I thought they might have been a lame attempt at address probing, but almost nobody actually sends bounces anymore, and they're doing it from IPs that become nonroutable very quickly. I don't know what to make of it.
17: IANAITProf'l, but I've always imagined those are trying to confuse filters by throwing chaff.
My mother recently drove all to heck and gone visiting friends and got b my b favorite scam story. She was visiting a friends neighbors in a Florida swamp - the land great-grandfathered into a preserve, the friend only made it out via service, neighbors have maybe fifth-grade educations - and they were telling her about the selling scheme they'd heard of a few years back. As she was arranging her face for defensive sympathy or not-buying, depending on how far the scam had gotten, they said more or less, So when we'd enough we sold up and now our retirement is taken care of.
Surely mentioned here before, but tow two favorite spam subject lines I've received.
1) You left your coat.
2) Dad?