– Attempts Made to Defraud Persons on Contact List
ONLINE fraudsters earlier on Monday hacked into the e-mail account of Mr. Oladimeji Abitogun, publisher and editor-in-chief of sharpedgenews.com, changing his password and sending out messages to thousands of contacts in the e-mail account soliciting for monetary assistance from the publisher.
Copies of the mass e-mails sent by the online frauds were made available to Mr. Abitogun by concerned private contacts and professional associates. Until then, Mr. Abitogun was not aware that his e-mail account was hacked into.
“I’m sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it’s due to the situation of things right now,” began the e-mail from the scam artists titled “Emergency Assistance Needed.” It went on to tell a bogus story about Mr. Abitogun being stranded with his family in Almeria, Spain, after being robbed of all their belongings by gunmen.
“Our belongings such as credit card, cell phone, jewelries and cash (were) all stolen from us, as we got mugged by some unknown gunmen on our way back to the hotel w(h)ere we lodge(d),” the dubious writer claimed, inveighing a false sense of relief that passports and return tickets in their possession were however safe.
“We’ve been to the Embassy and the Police here but they are not 100% supportive at all. Also our other belongings are being retained by the hotel management pending until the time we pay the Hotel bills. We need to pay the hotel bills and also getting a cab down to the airport, so we don’t miss our return flight back home, as it leaves in next 48hrs from now.”
Sounding genuinely desperate, the writer begged in the e-mail for assistance, asking for the sum of one thousand eight hundred and fifty Euros to take care of emergency expenses which he promised to pay upon his return home.
“I’m financially strapped right now and need your help. I need you to loan me some money, All i need is (€1,850.00 EUR) but I will appreciate any amount you can spare I promise to refund it to you as soon as we arrive home. I’ll be waiting to hear back from you so I can forward you my details on how to send the money to us,” the e-mail ended.
Yahoo!, operators of the e-mail service, were immediately alerted to the scam and it was revealed that the scammers operated from Germany, where they changed the password to the account and cleared-out the entire body of contacts associated with the account.
A return e-mail address to the false plea for assistance was also craftily inserted for the unsuspecting responder to use @ dimtog@yahoo.com, as opposed to the original dimtog@yahoo.com.
The account has since been restored to its owner, Mr. Abitogun, but thousands of e-mails and contacts going as far back as 2003 were lost to the activities of the online scam artists.
The case concerning the sharpedgenews.com publisher is reminiscent of the experience of American technology journalist Matt Honan, whose entire accounts, from e-mail, to iTunes and amazon.com profiles were hacked by online scam artists earlier this month, causing him to lose caches of prized information, along with private family photos, among other cherished possessions in his online accounts.
The latest development comes amid recent efforts by Reuben & Associate, parent company of sharpedgenews.com, to investigate and seek the prosecution of persons previously in its employ for defrauding the company. At least one person, Mr. Chris Ifeanyi Godwin, who worked at one of Reuben and Associate offices until last month, has been fired over financial improprieties amounting up to about half a million naira.
The management of sharpedgenews.com warned on Monday that anyone who does any further business transaction with Mr. Godwin does so at his own risk.
Speaking with sharpedgenews.com later on Monday, a technology expert advised that people should make sure they guard their private information. He recommended alpha-numeric passwords comprising numbers and letters should be employed as password, and that such passwords should be changed occasionally.
In the meantime, sharpedgenews.com is appealing to every recipient of the e-mail soliciting assistance from its publisher, Mr. Abitogun, to ignore and delete such e-mails, as it is from scam artists looking to make money off innocent people.
Mr. Abitogun, who operates his online news publishing outfit from out of Kansas City, Kansas in the United States, said that although he is currently in Nigeria, he is there alone without his wife and children, and that he has never visited Spain.