E-mail scam targets prominent Filipinos in Hong Kong

MANILA, Philippines - Several prominent personalities with links to the Filipino community in Hong Kong are warning members of the public against falling prey to an Internet scam that uses their email addresses to ask for money to be sent to a designated address in the United Kingdom. The scam, which first surfaced in the middle of this year, apparently started with an unknown group sending a cloned yahoo home page, urging subscribers to immediately fill in the sign-in form with their user names and passwords, or face having their accounts locked. One of the victims, migrant rights' advocate Edna Aquino, recalls: "The notification looked genuine, with the avatar and the yahoo logo exactly as they appear in the genuine yahoo home page." As soon as they obtained the passwords to the email accounts, the scammers immediately sent out email messages to the owners' contacts asking that money be sent to a particular address in the UK. The emails inadvertently said that the E-mail account holders had been traveling in the UK and had all their money stolen in their hotel. In at least one case, the one in which the yahoo account stolen belonged to former Migrante International chairperson and Hong Kong Filcom leader Connie Regalado, money was sent through Western Union to the address indicated in the email. Regalado said a friend based in Mongolia sent US$600 in response to the urgent email sent on her behalf, thinking she was in a real bind. "Nalaman ko lang dahil nag-follow up siya sa email din," said Regalado. "Tinatanong niya kung natanggap ko yung pinadala niya 20 days earlier." Ironically, Regalado got her friend's E-mail from the yahoo account that was at the time, already under the control of the scam artists."Pero pagkatapos noon, hindi ko na ulit magamit," said Regalado. Following the incident, Regalado sent a letter of complaint to Yahoo, but did not get a response. A follow-up E-mail by Migrante-UK also failed to yield anything. She never recovered control of her yahoo account as a result. Aquino for her part did not stop there. She demanded yahoo to give her back her account, but got nowhere initially. "Hinabol ko yung yahoo sa US at sa UK," she relates. Failing with that, she sought the help of Brtiain's Scotland Yard. "Kasi may unit sila for internet fraud; sinumbong ko sa kanila yung yahoo." Afterwards, she emailed yahoo again with the warning that she would hold them responsible for any fraud that would be committed with the use of the stolen account. For good measure, she attached the letter complaint she sent to the UK's Metro Police. "Finally they got back to me and asked to call me," she said. "They asked me a lot of questions which luckily I was able to answer." After satisfying the yahoo people that she was indeed the owner of the account, Aquino regained access. Close on the heels of the spurious account sent in Aquino's name was another that bore the name of graphics designer Tony Bartolome. Save for a few rephrased paragraphs, the two emails were almost identical, and even gave the same address in London to which money was meant to be sent. "It disturbed me for about a month, kasi maraming tumatawag at nagtatanong tungkol dito," said Bartolome. It did not help that as in the case of Regalado and Aquino, yahoo ignored all his emails asking for his account to be given back to him. Luckily, not one among those who got the spurious email responded to the call for money to be sent to London. "Iyong mga friends ko naman, they would call first before sending money, lalo na at ang laki nang hinihingi," said Bartolome. "At saka, mura lang naman ang tawag at madali pa." But in another case involving Sister Concepta Bellosillo of the Catholic Centre, several Filipino overseas workers in Canada who used to work in Hong Kong took the appeal seriously. One of them, Nelia Samaniego, frantically tried to raise the 1350 pounds asked for in the email, thinking how sad it was that the good nun had fallen victim to heartless thieves in the U.K. Fortunately, she was looking after four children and did not have the chance to dash out and remit the money. She also did a second take when a close friend advised her to think twice, saying it was strange that she was the one being asked for such a huge sum of money. After calling up a few friends in Hong Kong, Samaniego learned that Sister Concepta was not even in the UK, but was in Manila. The latest to fall prey to the syndicate was Ed de Vega, currently the Philippine Consul General to Barcelona and husband of Tess de Vega, who served as consul in HK for five years, and is now Consul General in London. In his case, the con artists asked for a "loan" of US$2,720 to be sent to an address in Bristol. Donors were also told to email back with the details of the remittance transaction, including a 10-digit M.T.C.N. number, which serves as an identification for the recipient. As an added twist, the email said Congen de Vega had spoken to the embassy in London, but "they are not responding to the matter effectively." De Vega did not waste time battling with yahoo for the recovery of his account. He simply emailed all his contacts, warning them of the scam being perpetrated in his name. He also advised them to immediately erase the tainted account from their address books, and replace it with the one he had used to send out his email. - The Sun