I received this email from her and have certain questions as to its legitimacy:
Good Morning,
I need your help..My family and i made a trip to out of the country due to an emergency unfortunately for us, we were robbed and i was hurt on our way back to the hotel. I need your help financially to sort out some bills here and get back home. I will refund you the money once i get back home.
Let me know if i can count on you.
Thanks so much!
Marilu
I was just about to send lots of money but then noticed that she wrote “Let me know if i can count on you.” Marilu always capitalizes her “I’s.” So suddenly the whole ruse became crystal clear. Marilu needs money and came up with this ridiculous scheme. Sometimes it takes a while, but nothing ever gets by me.
Huh? What? Her email was hacked? This is a common scam? Hmmmm? Come to think of it, I did give $500 to Ted Danson for the same thing and he never thanked me.
26 comments :
In case you're not kidding, yes, it's a common scam. It does mean her email has been hacked, and you should use some other means to let her know she should change her password and scan any computer that has accessed that account for viruses.
A list was published last week of the top 20 most commonly used passwords for 2015. She should use something not on the list. :) Come to think of it, you might get some comic fodder out of that list.
wg
Apparently, Ms. Henner remembers everything EXCEPT punctuation.
These scammers are just the lowest. They pray on peoples' good nature, exploit it.
WORSE though, is that the good-natured person is skeptical and cynical about giving to other REAL causes/situations.
It doesn't have to be money either.
After hearing about how good Samaritans were robbed on the side of a highway when they stopped to help someone who looked like they were having car trouble...I imagine we'd all think twice about stopping.
It does cause irrevocable damage.
i bet she remembers what the weather was like on the day she composed this.
Do you mean I should stop waiting for the $100 million that was promised to me eight years ago by the daughter of the former President of Liberia who emailed me personally and promised I could share in her father's immense fortune as long as I sent thousands and thousands to cover administration and processing fees and ended her email by offering me a thousand blessings on me?
Damn.
Tell her you'd love to give some money, but you gave it all to that Nigerian prince.
It may not have been her e-mail that was hacked. More likely it was a friend who had her in their address book. You might want to scan your computer for viruses and Trojan horses. If you need help, you can ask Michael. You should ask Ted for that money back.
Usually there are other emails on the cc, along with hers that you don't recognize.
Just yesterday, my medium said that I was very gullible...
I've gotten email asking me for money addressed from myself! A very inept hacker indeed, but then it's the library's computer and not mine so maybe that has something to do with it.
I got an email the other day from a friend that said he had a Google Document that he has shared with me. When I clicked on the link, it sent to a realistic looking Google log-on page asking for my username and password. Luckily I noted that the log-on page was actually on some other domain, so I didn't enter the information.
Quick advice for everyone...
Try to use a different password for each account... when possible.
OR
use one or two for the important ones you use all the time (Bank, Email)
use different one for work stuff
use different one for minor emails you infrequently visit
You might want to check what email address that actually came from. I'm guessing it's subtly different from Marilu's actual one. Like a 1(numeral) instead of an l(letter) in her name.
Major fan of hers-and I bet she was laughing hysterically when she got wind of this!
I know I was.
This is no scam: Tomorrow night, I'm boarding a Greyhound in Jacksonville, Fla., and will arrive in Los Angeles sometime Monday. I need leads for employment (I have typing, editing and proofreading skills) and housing (a room is sufficient) as I try to get my life back together. I made some mistakes during my first stay in LA, and this time I have no margin for error. If anyone can assist or suggest possibilities for either endeavor, it truly would be appreciated.
This mystery is easily solved because its Hollywood, everybody is interconnected, you just have follow the money.
Ken gives Ted Danson 500 bucks because he thinks Ted is going to save an ocean. Instead Ted repays Rhea Pearlman the money he owes her, Rhea is married to Danny Devito who works with Marilou Henner. Henner's Taxi buddy Jeff Conaway somehow ends up with the 500 and uses it to buy smack from his Grease friend John Travolta. Travolta was in "Pulp Fiction" with Christopher Walken, who was onboard the Splendor being intimate with R.J. Wagner. R.J. "accidently slips" everytime he runs to the phone to talk to Charlie Sheen, whom he worked with on Two 1/2 Men. Sheen is related to Emilio Estevez, who worked with Richard Dreyfuss on "Stakeout". Dreyfuss sits at home polishing the Oscar he won largely thanks to his "Good-bye Girl" friend Marsha Mason. Mason starred in a number of episodes of "Frasier" which won numerous Emmys thanks, in part, to........................KEN LEVINE!
Ken's hard work on this blog was his downfall. He posts something new every day, thats 365 ideas so every so often he has to throw in one like this. It was Ken behind the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll, the end. Tossed salads and scrambled eggs.
The writing is bad because these are the same Nigerian e-mail scammers. I received one many years ago from a friend. He had gotten an e-mail about his Yahoo account being hacked, and went to the page linked in the e-mail and filled in his password.
If it didn't say to send the money to Nigeria I might have fallen for it.
The FBI supposedly has a task force on this, but I could find no place to report this.
I was able to get the guy to keep sending me e-mails, kept asking for MTCN from Western Union.
Got similar e-mails from some of my college class mates on my master list. They got in all kinds of jams in places around the world. Being the scrooge that I am, I didn't send them any money. I still feel bad tho.....
Ken - this is a Friday question that was hoping you could pass along to blog reader Bill Persky. I've read that it was always Carl Reiner's plan to end THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW after 5 seasons. Were there any discussions or network request for the show to continue without Carl's participation? Do you think the show would have been able to maintain it's high quality for a few more seasons with or without Carl on board?
Somehow I doubt that hackers simply guessed Marilu Henner's password. If there's anyone who can juggle and remember multiple complex passwords, it's her...
Just send her Taxi fare.
Elf you can get an e-mail declaring your account is compromised unless you go this page, where it asks for your password. Some of these pages are very sophisticated, looking very real. The only tell is that the website is not the right one. If they manage to hack the DNS server as well so that gmail.com takes you to their server instead, then you have no chance. This is why they implemented the two-step passwords.
Indeed, if you try to sell something on Craigslist, and you include your number, you might get a text that appears to be from Craigslist, stating your account is in trouble and to send the link for the post that Craigslist e-mails you. I'm not sure what they intend to do once they have this as at best they can edit the post and maybe get some more info about your account.
Even worse is if you sell a car, someone might respond back saying they will buy but they need to see a Carfax report. They will say they are OK with the price but they just need a report, suggesting something like carvinreports.com, which is actually owned by the scammer, and they are just looking to collect your credit card numbers.
Re: the question about whether or not THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW could have continued without Carl Reiner. I've read that the bigger hitch to continuing the show past season five was that star Dick Van Dyke was ready to leave by then. Feature films were beckoning and Van Dyke just wasn't interested in continuing the TV show. Now, that feature film career didn't pan out, and enough of those films flopped that Van Dyke wound up back on TV by the early '70s, doing another sitcom, but I guess you can't blame the guy for wanting to take a shot at features while he had the chance.
Besides, they probably would have had to have switched to filming the show in color, and I'm just not sure I could deal with DICK VAN DYKE SHOW episodes filmed in color. :)
Andy Griffith had a similar five year plan for his 1960s sitcom, but it wound up running for eight years. Griffith said years later that when the network backs up a truck loaded with money to your door and tells you it's yours if you'll keep your show going awhile longer, it's easy to convince yourself your show still has plenty of life left in it.
Howard Stern recently told a story about how he got an email from Garry Shandling one day asking Howard if he could do him a favor. Howard sat and stewed over the email for a week thinking about what this favor was and what can of worms it would open. He finally decided to reply with an email that said "Hi, how's it going?" Garry responded back in less than 5 minutes with pretty much the same request you got. Facepalm!
Yeah, this is a pretty common one. People even go onto Dating Sites and put up fake profiles, sending out communications with usually some sexy blonde in the photo. You talk to them for a few messages, they always have some reason why they're abroad at the moment (and thus can't meet you JUST YET), but then right before they leave, they tell you they've been attacked and need money.
Apparently this is shockingly-effective, and a lot of guys are duped into sending money.
Saw a funny cartoon recently, captioned "Somewhere in Nigeria", that showed a crestfallen guy at a computer next to an enormous pile of cash, and he's saying, "I don't understand! I've sent out like THIRTY THOUSAND EMAILS!"
Post a Comment