Perhaps it's some kind of link left over from all those ships from the Spanish Armada that found themselves making landfall on the West Coast of Ireland, or maybe it's an obscure allusion to the beleaguered Eurozone, but my colleague Urban Shrott passed on to me a spate of rather unusual lottery spams. You may be familiar with similar examples of this style of 419 reading like this (an example quoted by Urban in his blog.):
EL GORDO – FINAL NOTIFICATION
YOUR EMAIL ID HAS WON Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand Euros(€450,000.00) in the Spanish ‘El Gordo’ International Email sweepstakes lottery award with lucky numbers 9/11/13/24/43 and Ref:ES/9420X2/68.
For Clarification and claim procedure Contact:
CAPITAL FINANCIAL SERVICES
Mr. Juan Carlos Jr.
Tel: 34-672-594-567
Email: capitalsinfo@aol.com
With your Full names, Address, Age, Occupation, Phone numbers,
Send your reply to; capitalsinfo@aol.com
Congratulation.
(Juan Carlos? Is the Spanish monarchy that short of cash?)
However, the fascinating twist here is that the scammers went to the trouble of translating the message into Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic), though I can't vouch for the quality of the translation.
Cheers, Urban. (Or should I say sláinte mhaith?)
David Harley CITP FBCS CISSP
ESET Senior Research Fellow
