Yesterday I picked up a letter at our old address (now my son's) It was obviously going to turn out to be a phishing letter.  We laughed at first but it also made me very cross.  It was supposed to be from a Chinese fellow (who is the Principle Assurance manager for the Hua Xia bank) who had 'asked a friend' to post it to me.  He told me that a man - with the same surname as myself had asked him to invest a large sum of money out there which he did and guess what! It has now become an even larger sum which he can get hold of due to the demise of the said namesake who died intestate.  We could split it he suggests - but don't tell anybody!!!!  There was a telephone number (starting 00852), and an email address.   As I say - I am so cross I just want to pass this on to someone to do something about it.  I am pretty sure the telephone number and e-mail address won't lead back to anything though.  It was so ridiculous - especially going on that he is a family man with children and that he is in fear of the consequences - oh if only!   So I am breaking his 'confidence' and making sure you all know about it. 

i get alot of emails every day from different 'banks' asking me to update my info. I know there all crap but i clicked on one once which was a hsbc email, the bank im with. The internet banking page was very convincing, it asked me to enter all my security code, but to someone that wasnt as computer savvy they could be done.

Also recieved lots of ones from the bank of africa or china and recently the inland revenue for a huge tax refund! i dont know how they manage to get away with such blatent fraud.

They get away with it because they tend to be in places where the authorities don't have the time, resources, money or simply are not interested in prosecuting these people.

It's annoying when you get these emails or letters but the only thing you can really do is bin them (you could recycle the letters then at least something good will come of it :))

I've lost count of these type of letters ( as emails usually) I get.
Got one this morning in fact. Always 'Dear friend' and involving large amounts of money......just delete or bin them.

I'm astounded the hear that some people actually take them seriously.

The latest 'scam' I found was an advert on a cable channel asking you to put all your old gold into a pre addressed envelope and they would value it and send you what they thought........ how trusting is that?

In bin chuck, shred it.

Contact the Police and advise them of this scam, maybe even give them the letter too.  Yours is the second one I have heard of this week, same story.

Its only scrap value, so id be very suprised if it amounted to a tidy sum. Trying to cash in on the recession.

Im thinking of using the one for mobile though, said i would get £85 for this model.

> said i would get £85 for this model.

I have never paid that much for one new, LOL ;)

> Contact the Police

Sadly I don't think they will want to know or be able to do anything about it. I did wonder how widely this letter had been distributed - E-mail is easy to ignore - it just gets put into spam - my filter works reasonably well.  However opening a letter makes one feel as if they have actually violated your home. 

If you belong to a Neighbourhood Watch scheme you could give it to the local co-ordinator to pass on to the police.

Yes do pass it on to the police. They do investigate these scams as some people do actually believe them....

A new scam is apparently doing the rounds the email or letter says that you have been over paid working tax credits and need to pay several hundred pounds immediately. I got one on my email recently asking me to pay back working tax credit over paid to me for my children... (my kids are 32, 30 and 28 so I thnk they might be a little late).

Another scam I heard about a couple of days ago involves a telephone scam, somebody rings you tells you they work for BT and you will be cut off unless you give your credit card details to the caller to pay a debt you owe BT.  They say they can cut you off, but even though you can't hear them or dial out you are not cut off.

I always check with snopes.com if I get a letter or email which I am suspicious about.

> my kids are 32, 30 and 28

LOL! But it is a fact that too much has been paid out with working tax credits.   The more these scams are made public the less people will get caught out.  I checked with snopes straight away.  Might pass it on to the community police woman - at least I have done something positive.  I just wondered if there was a website or someone responsible for collecting these things. 

If you come across a letter, phone call or email which you think is a scam you can look on snopes and if it is not there report it to them and they check it out. Once they have checked it out they post on their web site whether it is true of false and if there is a history to the scam.

Thanks Polly, will do that AFTER I've worked out how to spend the 500,000 euros that I "won" via email today.

Have just had a really good look at Snopes - eventually found that they have the false inheritance scam - which is roughly the same sort of thing - a representative from a bank contacts you to say that a distant relative has left money etc.  In this case it wasn't as convincing as that - it was a guy with the same name as yourself has died intestate - I can get hold of the money - lets split it between us!!!  So they do cover the theme already.  Thanks for the suggestion Polly.

Did anybody see that the BBC news had a report on the telephone scam I mentioned? Saw it this morning.

Had a second one this week - along the same lines but the bank employee has changed his name!  It makes me uncomfortable - where they got my name and address from.  Why are they targeting me not my husband?  E-mail spam I can take - easily brushed aside but this is different.  It has the look of a hand typed letter - someone is investing in stamps to do this - the first one was first class - this one second.  They obviously think it is a worthwhile scheme to repeat it to the same address.  This is slightly differently worded - and the post code can't be read.  Hope I have seen the last of them.