Talk About Bi-Coastal

That title will make sense in a minute. First, I want to thank Local 2 viewer Erick for passing this one along to me. Erick received this very official looking e-mail…

From the Desk of the Secretary
U.S Department of Treasury
Office of Foreign Assets Control
NW, Washington D.C, 20220, U.S.A
Operators Tel #: (206) 299 2709

Dear Beneficiary, 

This is to inform you that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) under
the U.S Department of Treasury, has declared that all outstanding transactions
involving U.S. persons and non U.S persons, including BGs, CDs and MTNs payments
and fund transfers to common carriers, incident to the blockage of funds and the
person whose property and interests in property are blocked, are presently
authorized to be unblocked, thus, issuing a tentative license to this effect, as
all payments will be effected in due process, following the new mandates that
was published to the Treasury Department by the new U.S President, Barack
Hussein Obama.

Therefore, if you are affected in one way or the other in reagrds to this
development, kindly get back to me immediately with your personal details
through my private email (derrick_johnson@hotmail.com) for further
clarifications and information on how to file in an application to unblock your
funds/property immediately to aid the transfer of your funds into your account
through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York- Automated Clearing House (ACH)
System. Please attend urgently to this message.

Derrick Johnson,
Director, Office of Foreign Assets Control

This is definitely one slickly worded scam. For those of you who don’t know, the Office of Foreign Assets Control enforces economic and trade sanctions. This is just a new twist on a very old scam. The scam being you are entitled to a lot of money all you have to do is give me your bank account and social security numbers to process the transaction. Hey, I give the scam artists credit on this one, at least all the words are spelled correctly. Plus, note the vague nature of the e-mail. There are a lot of 10-cent words in there but nothing specific as to what sanction has been lifted or from what country. Also, what government employee, conducting official government business is going to ask you to send sensitive information to their personal g-mail account? As for the Bi-Coastal title of this blog, that’s because the Office of Foreign Assets Control is a part of the Treasury Department, which is in Washington, D.C. The number on the e-mail has an area code for Seattle. I called it and, what a shock, no one answered. The only response is a pre-recorded voice with a British accent telling me to leave a message. I also couldn’t find any record of a Derrick Johnson working for this office.