Local & State Headlines

Old e-mail scam gets new twist

• Albany Police say an e-mail purporting to be from a Marine serving in Iraq is a classic e-mail scam.

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — A new scam e-mail claiming to be from a Marine deployed in Iraq is making its way across the Internet.

The e-mail, which purports to be from a Sgt. Marc Krois of the U.S. Marine Corps, states that the Marine was part of a group that found several million dollars in “various currencies” near one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces “several months ago.”

The Marine in the e-mail said his cut of the find was $30 million, $5 million of which he is willing to give to the person who helps him transfer the money out of the country.

Albany Police Detective Julius Culp said Tuesday the e-mail appeared to be a classic “Nigerian” or “fee-advance” scam where the scammer promises large rewards for a small investment.

“They give you something about getting money into the country and they need your money to expedite it,” Culp said.

Culp said most of the online community in Albany has gotten used to the multiple scam e-mails that arrive daily in their inboxes. But with the new twists that some of them are taking, residents should beware, he said.

“All of the legitimate outfits that I know of don’t send unsolicited e-mails,” he said.

In the e-mail, the writer says he knows he shouldn’t have taken the money, but couldn’t resist because he and fellow soldiers in Iraq face so many challenges.

“(T)hough this was an illegal thing to do. But I tell you what?” the e-mail states. “No compensation can make up for the risks we are taking with our lives in this hellhole.”

The writer claims to have hidden the money in several packages being held by a woman “with an international organization here,” though the woman does not know what is in the packages. The writer also asks for the e-mail’s recipient to keep the message confidential “as any leakage will be too bad for us,” he says.

In the e-mail is a link to a news article from the BBC about $100 million being found by U.S. troops in Iraq, although the article’s “last updated” date is April 30, 2003.

A google search for “Sgt. Marc Krois” also reveals that several others have received the same e-mail, who went on to post it in online forums as spam.

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