I'm currently working on an upgrade to this site that will include a section about some of the scams most commonly seen in spam. I've already covered a few of the favorites — 419, money transfer, courier parcel, fake storefonts and so on (don't look for them just yet; the scam guide is part of a planned comprehensive upgrade which may take months). However, I think I've just come across a new one.

This morning the spamtraps held a batch of emails with the subject line “It's Linda I've mailed you many times” The message in the body of the email read:

My name is Linda. I'm looking for a business partner. If you have an ebay account with a big number of positive feedbacks or you have an ebay store, we can have a good business despite the financial crisis! You'll get even more feedbacks. I work at the online store and I can buy goods at cost price. No investments are needed. We sell gardening and household equipment, tools and electronics. For more information email directly to me ONLY at ...

The message is signed 'Linda Wright', but the 'From' lines contained the usual mess of made-up names and addresses. Other messages from the same sender had subject lines such as “If you are still looking for a good job please contact me”, “I've contacted you many times please email me ASAP” and so forth. The messages give a variety of different Gmail addresses as contact addresses.

It's very clear that this is a scam. It's also clear that anyone who is unwise enough to deal with "Linda" is indeed going to get “even more feedbacks”, and probably none of them will be good. The question is, what kind of scam is it?

The obvious explanation is that 'Linda' is simply looking for eBay users with a good reputation to run a variant of the fake storefront scam: the sucker allows 'Linda' to advertise items through their account with their good reputation helping to make the sale, 'Linda' racks up a few big-ticket sales, pockets the money and then disappears, leaving the sucker with a bad reputation (and a lot of money to pay back, and maybe even some criminal charges).

I'm still speculating here, but I'd bet that the scam also has some elements in common with the 'money transfer' scam. To convince suckers to risk their reputation, 'Linda' has to offer them something, and the most obvious thing would be a share in the profits. The victim will be told to send on the bulk of the money from any sales made by 'Linda' (by Western Union, presumably) but keep back 10-20% for themselves as 'commission'. Because 'Linda' will be selling expensive items like iPhones and laptops, the 'commission' could quickly add up to quite a sizeable amount. Unfortunately, when 'Linda' fails to deliver, the amount that has to be paid back is going to be even more sizeable.

I don't know for certain that that's how the scam works, but this is certainly one possibility. (If I've just invented and described a brand new scam, I apologize for giving the crooks ideas — but I bet that they'd have thought of it themselves sooner or later). If you have other ideas, send me a note.

And in the meantime, don't share your eBay account with anyone.