Industrial Espionage Fail
A friend of mine in the game industry forwarded this gem to me earlier in the week.
Here’s an email somebody at Treyarch just got sent from a guy impersonating an IW employee haha. It’s the most horribly ill-conceived scheme ever.
This is an actual email someone sent to a game company employee.
Hello treyarch employee i am with a company you know very well can you guess well ill tell you infinity ward. And after asking some other treyarch employees we were shocked to find out that half of you guys do not know what game we are making so here is the poll. Winner will be choosen at random, to quallify you have to get all the next questions right and winner will recieve a special gift yet to be announced.
#1 What is the title of the game?
#2 What is the numeric value of the game (what is the number i.e 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)?
#3 Will there be vehicles in multiplayer?
#4 What time period is it set in?
please reply to this email with answer and forward this email to other employees
Thanks and have a great day from infinity ward maker of call of duty 4.
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December 3rd, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Wow, don’t you think it would be easier to just check a few gaming sites. IGN, Gamespot, 1up, and the thousands of private blogs.
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December 4th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Or just READ THE LAST LINE. Call of Duty 4. That will give you two of the four outright. Then google.
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December 4th, 2008 at 7:57 am
I love those unprofessional, scam emails, especially the “You’ve Won!” lottery scams. I received one from Texaco-Chevron@yahoo.com which prompted me to email the people I know that work at Texaco-Chevron Corp to tell them that they all now work for me. Still waiting on that check…
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December 4th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I recently got one where a “lawyer” from the Philippines claimed that “his client” died and left me his sole beneficiary, and he wanted to split the inheritance with me. To the credit of whomever was running the scam, their grammar and legalese was pretty good. However, the thing that had me giggling was the fact that this so-called lawyer claimed that he located me because I had the same last name as his client. For most people, that wouldn’t be a big surprise. However, I have a VERY unique last name. So unique, in fact, that I personally know every person in the world with that last name, because I’m related to every single one of them. Oh, and we’re all living in the US.
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Kat reply on December 4th, 2008 12:14 pm:
Well hold on, if someone left you as the SOLE beneficiary, why in the heck would you want to split your money with some lawyer? That should be a red flag right there.
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Minty reply on December 4th, 2008 2:24 pm:
Oh, the whole thing obviously was a fake. Executors can’t demand part of your inheritance (and certainly not the 60% this “lawyer” was suggesting), and they don’t inform you of said inheritance via email. I just thought the whole thing was stupid until I read the “client with the same name as yours. . .from the Philippines” part.
Oh, and what makes this an even stupider scam? There were no instructions for sending bank or social security information. How are they supposed to steal my money otherwise?
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Caine reply on December 5th, 2008 2:35 pm:
OMG! I got the very same scam email!
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Minty reply on December 5th, 2008 3:28 pm:
I think it’s the new Nigerian. Also, it’s the first scam email I’ve ever received, which makes me feel like I’ve finally “arrived” on the Internet.
Oh, wait, no, that was when I got my first penile enhancement spam email.
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Signalist reply on August 25th, 2011 4:05 am:
I have received dozens of emails from 18 -year old African widows and princesses in pinch, at least twenty emails from Bank of Africa employees who have stumbled upon money no-one has claimed for decades and which will be transferred to the local government if someone doesn’t claim it soon, apparently the law states that the claim must come from abroad and the transfer involves bribes to the government officials (if they can be bribed why don’t they just bribe the officials to forget the ‘foreign claimant’ -part and keep the money themselves?)
oh, and at least thirty African billionaires with their whole families have died in one planecrash on Kilimanjaro and I am the one all of them have wanted to inherit their riches should their families die with them.
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December 4th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Check out 419 Eater dot com. Some of the stuff on there will make you laugh so hard you lose control of some bodily functions.
Captch – 100 obeying = Only on my best days as a Flt. Sgt.
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December 5th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Heh. Scams and the like are fun. I get about one a day. My favorite has to be the one that basically state my Visa, Mastercard, Discover card or any other card info may have been stolen and if I would kindly go to their site and enter my credit card info they would let me know. As I currently have only two credit cards, and one of them is the company business/travel card which is only active when I turn it on. I enter that one and immediately call the credit issuer and let them know any action on the account is attempted identity theft. I’ve actually caused 16 people to be arrested, including a 16 yo kid. Funny stuff.
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Stickfodder reply on December 5th, 2008 7:06 am:
I want one of those company business/travel cards they sound like fun.
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eastpaw reply on December 5th, 2008 11:14 am:
You officially rock.
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Caine reply on December 5th, 2008 2:37 pm:
Dude, my hero!
Next time I get one of those I’ll try to remember to do the same thing. It’ll be great getting more of those thieves off the streets.
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Minty reply on December 5th, 2008 3:30 pm:
Awesome. I’ve never gotten one of those, and now I kinda wish I did. . .
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December 5th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I got a scam email with the whole official Microsoft logo and everything, claiming I won 1 million euros in a contest whereby they used my Yahoo email address to enter me in the contest (without my knowledge or consent I might add). I replied asking to contact an official representative from Microsoft to collaborate this contest, and needless to say, I got no replies. =)
What truly tipped me off was the bad spelling mistakes and grammar.
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