How to identify scams like "CashAid Project"

What is "CashAid Project"?

Upon examining the email, we found that it is a typical example of a phishing email, attempting to deceive the recipient into providing personal information and (or) sending funds. It claims that a recipient has been selected as a beneficiary for a certain amount of money. Such emails should be ignored and reported.

More about the "CashAid Project" scam email

This email opens with a generic salutation, addressing the recipient as a "Grant Beneficiary" and congratulating them on being selected for the Children Charity Foundation's (CCF) CashAid Grant. The sender, claiming to be Marvin Hollis, a Disbursement Officer at CCF, asserts that the recipient's email address was randomly chosen during a selection process involving seminar/conference attendees and internet users.

The email promises a substantial grant of $2,740,000, divided into two components: $1,740,000 for charity work aimed at assisting underprivileged children and $1,000,000 for the recipient's personal business development.

In order to proceed with the grant release, the recipient is urged to promptly fill out a "Grant Payment Scheme Voucher Form" (GPSV) attached to the email. The message emphasizes the importance of keeping the provided qualification number confidential to avoid disqualification. The email also includes a request for the recipient to acknowledge the receipt by calling the sender directly.

The purpose of this email is to deceive the recipient into divulging personal information or sending money to the scammer. Scammers in this email may seek personal information such as full names, addresses, dates of birth, and financial details like bank account or credit card information.

Also, scammers behind this email may attempt to ask for upfront fees or additional charges under various pretexts. They could claim that certain fees are required for processing the grant, facilitating the release of funds, or covering administrative costs.

Recipients should be cautious and refrain from making payments or providing financial information in response to such requests.

Threat Summary:

Name	CashAid Project Email Scam
Threat Type	Phishing, Scam, Social Engineering, Fraud
Fake Claim	The recipient has been selected as a beneficiary
Disguise	Letter from Marvin Hollis, a Disbursement Officer at CCF
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.
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Similar scam emails in general

Emails of this type typically share common characteristics such as unsolicited nature, generic greetings, promises of substantial financial gains, urgent calls to action, requests for personal or financial information, and the use of attachments or links that may contain malware.

They often employ tactics to create a sense of urgency, exploit trust, and manipulate recipients into disclosing sensitive information or making financial transactions. Examples of similar emails are "Coetzee & Fisher Attorneys Email Scam", "Assistance To Move Funds Email Scam", and "LOTERIA NAVIDAD 2023 Email Scam".

How do spam campaigns infect computers?

Threat actors utilize email to introduce malware to computers by embedding harmful links or attachments within their messages. When individuals click on links or open attachments, they unwittingly trigger the download of malware onto their computer systems. In most cases, users activate the malware by themselves.

Malicious software can be camouflaged within various file types, including executables (.exe), PDF documents (.pdf), scripts (.js, .vbs), archives (.zip, .rar), shortcuts (.lnk), MS Office files like (.xls, .doc), installer packages (.msi, .dmg), and HTML files (.html, .htm).

How to avoid installation of malware?

Exercise vigilance when handling emails that encourage you to open attachments or click on links. Refrain from accessing files or interacting with links in emails that appear irrelevant or unexpected, especially if they come from unfamiliar addresses. Take a proactive stance by consistently updating your operating system and installed software to ensure you have the latest security patches.

Utilize reliable antivirus and anti-malware solutions as an added layer of protection. Avoid interacting with dubious advertisements and abstain from downloading files from sources you do not trust. When obtaining software, choose official websites and reputable app stores to minimize the likelihood of encountering malicious content.

If you have already opened malicious attachments, we recommend running a scan with Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows to automatically eliminate infiltrated malware.

Apparance of the scam email (GIF):

Text presented in this email:

Subject: CASHAID PROJECT

Attention: Grant Beneficiary,
QUALIFICATION NUMBER
CCF/774/2024/1470
CASHAID PROJECT

Congratulations on your selection as one of the beneficiaries of the Children Charity Foundation (CCF) first quarter of the year 2024 CashAid Grant in commemoration of this year's anniversary program. Children Charity Foundation is an international foundation with its headquarters in London and branches across Europe and Africa, with a lot of international donors with the sole aim of improving the condition of living of people in and around the world and building a better globe through peoples oriented poverty alleviation programs such as this. Every year a random selection is made on email addresses of a cross section of seminar/conference attendees of interest, internet users etc..; and persons selected are contacted and their funds disbursed to them after due verification of claims.

Be informed that your email address with Qualification Number (CCF/774/2024/1470) as must have been informed in our earlier sent notification mail; falls within our grant category of US$2,740,000 (Two Million, Seven Hundred and Forty Thousand United States Dollars) This being in two facet, with US$1,740,000.00 (One Million Seven Hundred and Forty Thousand US Dollars) being earmarked for you to do charity works in assisting poor children in your area (which is the sole aim of establishing this foundation) and the balance $1,000,000.00 USD (One million United States Dollars) being in your personal grant for your personal business development. The foundation will after releasing the money to you send across its monitoring team to monitor how you are utilizing the grant in achieving the major aim of the release of the grant to you.

You are by this mail kindly requested to fill/complete the Grant Payment Scheme Voucher Form (GPSV) attached to this email in PDF format to aid in the processing of your grant release.

Please do fill and return these Required GPSV form in your next email. You are to download the form and fill in correctly the requested information's after which you will have to scan the form or get a clear snap shot of it and send back to us for confirmation. Do feel free to ask in question should there be any gray areas that you are not too clear with.

Upon receipt of your filled GPSV form, we shall commence with the processing of your grant.

Note: We advice that you keep your Qualification Number out of reach of any other person, as any double entry of same Qualification Number leads to automatic disqualification of the same. Our advice is based on experiences where Nominee's relations whom have access to their relations Qualification Numbers tend to present same and this in many cases have lead to disqualification.

Do make sure you call me to acknowledge the receipt of this email.
Thank you for your cooperation.

Yours Faithfully
Marvin Hollis
(Disbursement Officer )
CCF Grant.

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Quick menu:

• What is CashAid Project 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?

These scam emails are typically sent indiscriminately to a large number of recipients. They are not personalized or targeted specifically at individuals. Scammers use automated methods to send out mass emails.

I have provided my personal information when tricked by this email, what should I do?

If you have fallen victim to a scam email and provided personal information, immediately contact your bank to report the incident, change any compromised passwords, and consider alerting relevant authorities. Be cautious of potential identity theft and monitor your accounts closely for unauthorized activities.

I have downloaded and opened a malicious file attached to an email, is my computer infected?

The likelihood of infection varies based on the type of file accessed. For instance, executables can infect computers immediately upon opening, while malicious document files typically necessitate additional interaction from the user for the infection to occur.

I have sent cryptocurrency to the address presented in such email, can I get my money back?

Cryptocurrency transactions are untraceable, making tracing or recovering them challenging. Once completed, these transactions are typically irreversible, and the decentralized nature of blockchain technology ensures a high level of privacy and security.

I have read the email but did not open the attachment, is my computer infected?

Simply opening an email on its own is not a cause for concern. The real danger emerges when individuals interact with the email by clicking links or opening attached files, as these actions can pave the way for potential system infections.

Will Combo Cleaner remove malware infections that were present in email attachment?

Combo Cleaner is effective in identifying and removing nearly all known malware infections. It is important to note that sophisticated malware often conceals itself deeply within the system. Therefore, conducting a comprehensive full system scan is essential to ensure thorough detection and removal of potential threats.

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