Parcel Intercept

How the scam works:

(with video below) You receive a message – usually by e-mail, but sometimes via regular mail or social media as well – from somebody who claims to be from USPS (United States Postal Office), Canada Post, Royal Mail Group (in the United Kingdom) or Australia Post.

The sender, who claims to be a postal inspector, informs you that they intercepted a parcel with your name on it. Through the scanning person, it was discovered that the parcel contains a card with millions of dollars on it. However, in order to get the postal office to successfully deliver the parcel, you are in obligation to obtain a “duly sworn affidavit” from the national court of the country where the package originates from. The criminal justifies this as being an anti-terrorist measure.

In this case, in order to receive the package you need to pay the cost of the affidavit, which is maybe $190, or whatever the scammer asks for. Of course, you’ll never receive anything.

This scam is somehow similar to the Inheritance/Next-of-Kin one. Watch the video below to see the Inheritance Scam, exposed.

Inheritance Scam in the News Video

Here is the content of a scam email example we received, exactly as it was written:

UNITED STATES POSTAL INSPECTION SERVICE

PO BOX 555, NEW YORK NY 10116-0555

This is to notify you that we have intercepted your parcel from USPS COURIER SERVICE is making the delivery and we have stopped the delivery process for some security reasons stated below:

Our scanning system has detected that your parcel contains a confirmable CARD to the tune of US$6,500,000.00 USD.Such parcel coming from African /Europe/Asia is been verified by the postal inspection service.

Also for the Delivery of the Parcel to continue, you are in obligation to obtain from Spain, a Duly Sworn Affidavit from Spanish High Court which will back up the Origin of Fund. This is in line with the Anti-Terrorist Campaign which the USA Government has embarked on recently to protect our Territory from future attacks. You should therefore contact the sender of the CARD or the USPS Courier Agent in Madrid Spain to get the Sworn Affidavit for you while we wait to receive from you the Affidavit File Number to enable us forward your CARD to your address.

Below is his contact information. Note that the cost of the Affidavit is US$198 and do not hesitate to remit the amount to him.

Name: Mr Shane Ambrose

Email address: ambrose.shane@yahoo.co.nz

We shall then forward the CARD to you and you will be sure of a genuine CARD that is coming to you. We are doing this for your interest considering the rate which fraudulent and stolen checks/CARD are been sent to our innocent citizen that most times put them in problem.

Your urgent action on this notice will be appreciated.

Sincerely,

GUY COTTRELL

Chief Postal Inspectors

How to avoid:

Never fall for a request for help in getting money out of a foreign country. Look at the email address provided above in the text, it comes from a Yahoo domain. It is always a red flag. However, in the initial email, crooks can spoof any email address, making it look like it’s official. In this specific email we received, “Guy Cottrell” used a fake ‘chief@usps.gov’ as his email address.

The real Guy Cottrell is actually the Chief Postal Inspector at USPS, but the scammers impersonating spoofing his email address. Similar cases and scams occur with the impersonation of other major figures, such as James Comey from FBI or Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook. Needless to say, they don’t have time to send you personal emails, they have thousands of people working for them who do just that.

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