Do not trust the fake "Impossibility Of Your Transferring Your Funds" email
Written by Tomas Meskauskas on
What kind of email is "Impossibility Of Your Transferring Your Funds"?
After examining the "Impossibility Of Your Transferring Your Funds" email, we determined that it is spam. This phishing letter states that the recipient has been sent an ATM card containing 10.5 million US dollars.
The lengthy email mentions various real entities to create an impression of legitimacy. However, it must be stressed that all these claims are fake, and they are in no way associated with any of the mentioned entities.
The goal of this spam mail is to deceive recipients into disclosing their personally identifiable information, and it likely aims to trick them into transferring money to the scammers as well.
"Impossibility Of Your Transferring Your Funds" email scam overview
The spam email with the subject "YOUR REF:CLAIMS/ATM/204" (may vary) states that the recipient has been sent an ATM card with 10.5 million USD on it.
According to the letter, no other method was viable since banks and other entities providing money-transferring services were unable to facilitate such a transfer. Courier services were also not an option, as they could not ship a consignment box containing the funds. Hence, the money was placed on an ATM card and shipped with UPS. The shipping company will hold the card for less than seven days, after which – the federal government treasury will claim the funds.
The email recipient must reconfirm their personal information to have the card sent to the desired address. This letter targets the following data: full names, home addresses, countries of residence, telephone numbers, and scans/photos of ID cards.
The alleged sender claims to have taken care of most of the fees relating to this shipment; however, there is a "keeping" fee of 30 USD per day. Supposedly, efforts will be made to prevent any fees from mounting. The sender also expresses their confidence that the recipient will refund all the payments they had to make and will compensate them further. The scam email is signed off by the "United Nations Compensation Commission".
As mentioned in the introduction, all the claims made by this letter are fake, meaning no funds will be sent to the recipients under any circumstances.
Furthermore, it must be emphasized that UPS, Western Union, MoneyGram, United Nations, and any other genuine entities/individuals mentioned – are not associated with this scam.
This spam mail seeks to obtain information that would aid scammers in stealing the victims' identities and then carrying out a variety of nefarious deeds.
Additionally, the letter heavily implies that recipients will have to pay the supposed sender. Scammers prefer to use difficult-to-trace methods for obtaining funds since that diminishes the chances of persecution and money retrieval. For example, cryptocurrencies, pre-paid vouchers, gift cards, cash hidden in innocent-looking packages and shipped, as well as other similar methods are used by cyber criminals.
What is more, scams that involve money can open an avenue for scammers to trick victims into disclosing finance-related information, e.g., banking account details, online bank account log-in credentials, credit card numbers, and so on.
In summary, victims of scams like the one facilitated by the "Impossibility Of Your Transferring Your Funds" email – can experience severe privacy issues, significant financial losses, and identity theft.
If you have already provided your personally-identifiable or finance-related information to cyber criminals – immediately contact the appropriate authorities.
| Name | "Impossibility Of Your Transferring Your Funds" phishing email |
| Threat Type | Phishing, Scam, Social Engineering, Fraud |
| Fake Claim | Recipient has been sent an ATM card with 10.5 million USD on it. |
| Symptoms | Unauthorized online purchases, changed online account passwords, identity theft, illegal access of the computer. |
| Distribution methods | Deceptive emails, rogue online pop-up ads, search engine poisoning techniques, misspelled domains. |
| Damage | Loss of sensitive private information, monetary loss, identity theft. |
| Malware Removal (Windows) | To eliminate possible malware infections, scan your computer with legitimate antivirus software. Our security researchers recommend using Combo Cleaner. |
Spam campaigns in general
"Help With A Family Visa", "Human Development Grant", "Economic Devastation Recovery Relief", and "United Nations Reimbursement Program" are merely a few examples of emails similar to "Impossibility Of Your Transferring Your Funds".
Spam letters are used for a wide variety of scams with a likewise broad range of goals. To elaborate some on this topic, deceptive emails can facilitate phishing, sextortion, refund, tech support, lottery, inheritance, and various other scams.
This mail most commonly targets account log-in credentials, personally identifiable details, and finance-related information. It is also often used to trick recipients into making monetary transactions. What is more, spam emails are used to proliferate trojans, ransomware, and other malware.
How do spam campaigns infect computers?
Spam emails can include malicious files as attachments or download links. These files can be executables (.exe, .run, etc.), archives (RAR, ZIP, etc.), documents (Microsoft Office, Microsoft OneNote, PDF, etc.), JavaScript, and so forth.
When an infectious file is executed, run, or otherwise opened – the malware download/installation process is jumpstarted. For example, Microsoft Office files infect devices by executing malicious macro commands, while virulent OneNote documents need users to click on embedded files or links.
How to avoid installation of malware?
We strongly advise exercising caution with incoming emails, DMs/PMs, SMSes, and other messages. The attachments or links present in dubious/irrelevant mail must not be opened, as they can be malicious and cause infections. We recommend using Microsoft Office versions released after 2010 since they have the "Protected View" mode that prevents automatic macro execution.
It must be mentioned that malware is not distributed only through spam mail. Therefore, we also advise being vigilant while browsing since fraudulent and dangerous online content usually appears ordinary and innocuous.
Additionally, all downloads must be performed from official and verified channels. Another recommendation is to activate and update programs using only legitimate functions/tools, as illegal activation ("cracking") tools and third-party updaters can contain malware.
It is paramount for device/user safety to have a dependable anti-virus installed and kept up-to-date. Security software must be used to run regular system scans and to remove detected threats. If you've already opened malicious attachments, we recommend running a scan with Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows to automatically eliminate infiltrated malware.
Text presented in the "Impossibility Of Your Transferring Your Funds" spam email letter:
Subject:YOUR REF:CLAIMS/ATM/204
YOUR REF:CLAIMS/ATM/204
This is to bring to your notice that because of the impossibility of
your transferring your funds through Bank to Bank Transfer and Western
Union and Money-Gram network and also due to inability of some courier
company to deliver your consignment box, we have credited your
part-payment total of $10.5millon Usd valid fund into an (ATM Card
Number 5062291022744519) and I have paid the re-activation fee and
the delivery of the ATM Card To you,I paid it because the ATM Card
worth of $10.5millon Usd which I have registered it delivery yesterday,
it has less than Seven days to expire in the custody of the UPS
delivery Company and when it expires, the money will go into Federal
Government treasury account.
With that we decided to help you pay off the money so that the ATM
Card will not expire, because I trust that when you receive your ATM
Card definitely you must pay me back my money and even compensate me
for helping you.
Now I want you to contact UBA BANK:(ubabank524@aol.com) With
your physical address you desire the delivery to be made so that they
can deliver your ATM Card to your designated address without any
delay.
Reconfirm this information's to them.
Full name......................
Home address............
Country....................
Telephone...............
Copy of your id card
Like I stated earlier, the crediting re-activation,delivery and the
company registration charges has been paid by me, but we did not pay
their official keeping fees since they refused,they refused and the
reason is that they do not know when you are going to contact them and
the demur- rage might have increased by then, They told me that their
keeping fees is $30 per day only,and I deposited it yesterday.
Below is the Contact Information of the UPS EXPRESS Customer Service
Mr.Williams Ben, Email Address online: (Mr.joeben@aol.com )
Contact them today and also send them the security official keeping
charge to avoid increase of their fees and let me know once you
receive your ATM card, Important Notice, your ATM CARD package was
registered as a gift so that the delivery agent will not know the
content of your package okay.
Below is the Registration Information's of your ATM CARD SHIPMENT,
SHIPMENT CODE AWB 37XcS
REGISTERED TAG FCSCB77018.
SECURITY CODE SCAT/2012UPS/396/
TRANSACTION CODE 233/CYST/101/86048/
CERTIFICATE DEPOSIT CODE SCAT/BUN/lxiv/-08/02
DEPOSIT CERTIFICATE N0.: 405576
your faithfully
Mr.joe Benson
United Nations Compensation Commission
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Quick menu:
- What is "Impossibility Of Your Transferring Your Funds" phishing email?
- Types of malicious emails.
- How to spot a malicious email?
- What to do if you fell for an email scam?
Types of malicious emails:
Phishing Emails
Most commonly, cybercriminals use deceptive emails to trick Internet users into giving away their sensitive private information, for example, login information for various online services, email accounts, or online banking information.
Such attacks are called phishing. In a phishing attack, cybercriminals usually send an email message with some popular service logo (for example, Microsoft, DHL, Amazon, Netflix), create urgency (wrong shipping address, expired password, etc.), and place a link which they hope their potential victims will click on.
After clicking the link presented in such email message, victims are redirected to a fake website that looks identical or extremely similar to the original one. Victims are then asked to enter their password, credit card details, or some other information that gets stolen by cybercriminals.
Emails with Malicious Attachments
Another popular attack vector is email spam with malicious attachments that infect users' computers with malware. Malicious attachments usually carry trojans that are capable of stealing passwords, banking information, and other sensitive information.
In such attacks, cybercriminals' main goal is to trick their potential victims into opening an infected email attachment. To achieve this goal, email messages usually talk about recently received invoices, faxes, or voice messages.
If a potential victim falls for the lure and opens the attachment, their computers get infected, and cybercriminals can collect a lot of sensitive information.
While it's a more complicated method to steal personal information (spam filters and antivirus programs usually detect such attempts), if successful, cybercriminals can get a much wider array of data and can collect information for a long period of time.
Sextortion Emails
This is a type of phishing. In this case, users receive an email claiming that a cybercriminal could access the webcam of the potential victim and has a video recording of one's masturbation.
To get rid of the video, victims are asked to pay a ransom (usually using Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency). Nevertheless, all of these claims are false - users who receive such emails should ignore and delete them.
How to spot a malicious email?
While cyber criminals try to make their lure emails look trustworthy, here are some things that you should look for when trying to spot a phishing email:
- Check the sender's ("from") email address: Hover your mouse over the "from" address and check if it's legitimate. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft, be sure to check if the email address is @microsoft.com and not something suspicious like @m1crosoft.com, @microsfot.com, @account-security-noreply.com, etc.
- Check for generic greetings: If the greeting in the email is "Dear user", "Dear @youremail.com", "Dear valued customer", this should raise suspiciousness. Most commonly, companies call you by your name. Lack of this information could signal a phishing attempt.
- Check the links in the email: Hover your mouse over the link presented in the email, if the link that appears seems suspicious, don't click it. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft and the link in the email shows that it will go to firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0... you shouldn't trust it. It's best not to click any links in the emails but to visit the company website that sent you the email in the first place.
- Don't blindly trust email attachments: Most commonly, legitimate companies will ask you to log in to their website and to view any documents there; if you received an email with an attachment, it's a good idea to scan it with an antivirus application. Infected email attachments are a common attack vector used by cybercriminals.
To minimise the risk of opening phishing and malicious emails we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows.
Example of a spam email:
What to do if you fell for an email scam?
- If you clicked on a link in a phishing email and entered your password - be sure to change your password as soon as possible. Usually, cybercriminals collect stolen credentials and then sell them to other groups that use them for malicious purposes. If you change your password in a timely manner, there's a chance that criminals won't have enough time to do any damage.
- If you entered your credit card information - contact your bank as soon as possible and explain the situation. There's a good chance that you will need to cancel your compromised credit card and get a new one.
- If you see any signs of identity theft - you should immediately contact the Federal Trade Commission. This institution will collect information about your situation and create a personal recovery plan.
- If you opened a malicious attachment - your computer is probably infected, you should scan it with a reputable antivirus application. For this purpose, we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows.
- Help other Internet users - report phishing emails to Anti-Phishing Working Group, FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, National Fraud Information Center and U.S. Department of Justice.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Why did I receive this email?
Cyber criminals distribute spam emails in large-scale campaigns with the hopes that at least some recipients will fall for their scams; hence, this mail is not personal.
I have provided my personal information when tricked by this spam email, what should I do?
If you have already disclosed your private data (e.g., ID card details or photos/scans, credit card numbers, etc.) – contact relevant authorities without delay. And if you've provided your account log-in credentials to scammers – immediately change the passwords of all potentially exposed accounts and inform their official support.
I have read a spam email but didn't open the attachment, is my computer infected?
System infection chains are triggered when malicious attachments or links are opened/clicked. Therefore, merely reading an email was not initiate such processes.
I have downloaded and opened a file attached to a spam email, is my computer infected?
Whether your device was infected might depend on the opened file's format. If it was an executable (.exe, .run, etc.) – most likely, yes – the system was compromised. However, you might have avoided this if it was a document (.doc, .xls, .pdf, .one, etc.). These formats may require additional actions (e.g., enabling macro commands, clicking on embedded content, etc.) to begin downloading/installing malware.
Will Combo Cleaner remove malware infections present in email attachments?
Yes, Combo Cleaner is capable of detecting and eliminating practically all known malware infections. Note that performing a full system scan is essential – since sophisticated malicious programs typically hide deep within systems.
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