Identity Theft???

[Butterfly Man]

Sorry for the double post but this is an emergency (maybe, but I hope not)


Attention All Street Performers!

Steve Hansen (the Puppet Man), longtime friend and event organizer notified me last evening that he has been receiving cryptic e-mails from Masaji Terasawa (the Japanese taffy sculpture performer).

The e-mails ask for money saying the "he" has lost all his props and is in England . He asks for money to be sent there. These e-mails do not sound like the Masaji we know and are are perfectly written... ???????? Masaji has NEVER (in my 30 years knowing him) been able to make much sense in English on paper and would never do such a thing anyway... thus our concern.

We have called his private #'s (at his longtime home phone and longtime cell phone) and have been unable to reach him.

Our concern is identity theft of some kind is going on here.

[Drew Richardson]

This happened to a friend of mine recently. It's a common phishing scam with hotmail addresses, where the email owner logs in from an email they believe was from Microsoft asking them to verify their account. They have just given their password to the scammers, who lock the person out of their account using a new password. The scammers now have access to the person's email address book as well as past emails , which can be used to gain personal information to make the plea for money more credible. This has also been done with Facebook accounts.

[Butterfly Man]

Is this a Scam or what?

I too have now received these e-mails from "Masaji" ... I have received 2 e-mails that are exactly alike but only one is signed masaji ... the other one is signed Brigette... what the fuck is going on here?


P.S. I still can't reach him by phone.

[Funny Bones]

I will try & find out some info as i know he is on our contacts list here in Japan but the wife's out at the moment spending my hat. I think she was yapping on about something to do with this last night.

[Butterfly Man]

Case Solved

This was a scam and Masaji is dealing with his compromised e-mail account ... all is well now and pretty much everybody knows it was a fraud.

P.S pNet's got your back

[Jim]

Tell him to run the hell away from hotmail. Someone set him up a gmail account. I'm glad all is OK.

Good thing those internet scams all kind of stink of 'scam'. Or maybe it's just us buskers with our powerful street smarts.

[Rachel Peters]

Not just street smarts, but information highway smarts.
nyuk.

I watch a lot of investigative journalism type shows and this sort of stuff has been on a lot lately... sadly, while they're informing the public of the scams they're often also teaching people HOW to do it.

Identity theft through stealing mail is also frighteningly easy to accomplish.