Hi @MaineLonghorn – my dad is a pastor of a small church in VA and this exact same thing (exact same wording) is happening at their church right now. We are now also trying to figure out what is going on. Does your church happen to use Breeze church management software? That is the only place we can imagine the scammer got all the contact info. Or have you figured out anything else since this happened at your church?
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We got a postcard from a scammer today. It claimed that they needed us to call an 866 ph# to discuss a time sensitive issue with our mortgage with Veridian CU, and they put what they said is the mortgage ID# on the postcard. We don’t have a mortgage with Veridian now and never did, nor have we had any mortgage on this house. I can imagine someone being worried by this, wondering if their mortgage had been sold to a different company and if their payments hadn’t been properly recorded.
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Back in the day when we had a mortgage, it used to be sold over and over again. I agree – this could be very dangerous.
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Gift article from today’s New York Times:
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Ugh that’s scary. I tell my husband over and over that if he gets a call or email about a problem he shouldn’t respond but call the institution directly. I hope he remembers!
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I got two dangerous emails at work last week. One was from a company saying there was a problem with my class registration and to please confirm my details - and I had just taken an online class, but I noticed it was a different, though still professional sounding email address. And a minute later, I got an email from “our HR” department wanting me to check something, and I noticed it was from the same email address as the previous email.
I forwarded them to our phishing IT group who said they were very bad emails.
They have definitely come a long way from the prince in Nigeria! And I admit that even though I was pretty sure they were bad emails, they had me wanting to click on them.
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W and I mantra is if we get any unexpected, unsolicited call, text, email, knock on the door, whatever, especially requiring some immediate, even a seemingly innocuous response (eg press “1” now), it’s a scam and gets ignored. If the call comes from an entity we do business with, we may call back but only on the number we have. One thing that has greatly reduced spam calls to near zero is we added one of the commercially available call blockers to our land line. We use to get calls at 4 am. I believe these call blockers also work on cell phones. If you have an iPhone you have a feature “silence unknown callers” which may help as well.
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Most cellphones, both iPhone and Android, allow you to set quiet hours where the phone will not sound. On my phone its via a schedule configured in the “do not disturb” setting. I use this to avoid calls and texts in the middle of the nite.
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Don’t they know that ignorance is bliss? 
Today I got an email supposedly from my uncle. It read, "Sorry to bother, do you’ve a free moment over email?
Thank you
[Uncle’s full name]"
I clicked on the email address, and it looked legitimate. Out of curiosity, I responded and got a bounceback email from AOL. It said it couldn’t deliver to “uncle’sname2@aol.”
So bizarre. I guess I should let my uncle know that someone is spoofing his email address and using his name. But what stupid scammers, if you can’t respond to the email!
NortonLifeLock Subscription Renewal Email saying I was charged around $550 - a very official looking email. I don’t use Norton, may have ?25 years ago? I looked this up and it was identical to the scams that have been going around for at least a year. Did not respond. I really could see how someone might though! What I’ve read is that they try to gain access to your laptop.
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DH fell for that one a few years ago, sigh.
We got a mailing yesterday from a company “partnering” with XCEL (our gas company) to offer insurance for gas and sewer lines. But there was an asterisk explaining how they were not really associated with XCEL or related regulations. Seemed suspicious since the city util provides our water not XCEL. I did a “scam” google. Can’t be sure it’s an outright scam (as opposed to misleading offer). But we are not interested. Can’t be sure they’d pay any claims.
It seems worse than just using his name. They may have got hold of his contacts list, that’s why you received the email.
We get a lot of these “partner” or “affiliate” emails. Costco, Nordstrom, you name it. Definitely scams. Just look at the email addresses those come from.
Same. This one was a snailmail in an XCEL envelope, and since a friend is dealing with sewer line repair it caught my attention. For a little while.
Just got an email message purported to be from noreply@email.teams.microsoft.com that says, “Important news HImom! You are one of the winner in our contest. Your prize is the Apple iPhone 15 Pro …”
It has a button that says “Reply in Teams”
It’s a common scam going around–please be aware and don’t fall for it, folks!
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I’m always amazed that I have “won something” from an organization that has absolutely no reason to even have my email address.
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…and NEVER from the ones that DO!
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