Photocredit: caniphish.com
So I get a confused call from Adventure Wife this morning, about an email she got purporting to be from Docusign (an online service use to e-sign documents) about a Paypal payment to “your wallet” in the amount of $449.88 for the purchase of a “Springfield Armory Gun” and “This is an invoice for your recent purchase through PayPal. This charge will appear on your statement as payment to Springfield Armory Gun.. within 24 hours.”
You can see this is a confusing series of statements from the get go. Now Adventure Wife is immediately suspicious (possibly rightly so) that I may have made a gun purchase from Springfield Armory without her knowledge. (Hey it could happen!)
For once I did not have to feign ignorance about an accusatory gun purchase. I quite honestly said I did not buy a gun from Springfield Armory and could not imagine they sell anything in inventory for only $449.88! I also said I could not imagine I would somehow get paid for a “Springfield gun.” I considered for a half a tic Springfield was paying me for some unknown reason and told Adventure Wife I did put some Springfield Armory guns in an article last week from Shot Show- but I wasn’t very complimentary and they would not be sending me free money. I added if I had in fact purchased, sold or earned a gun fee like this I would at least take the time and trouble to cover my tracks better than this to prevent discovery by her, and it would not have ended up in her email box!
She pushed me the email and I saw it looked pretty good on the surface with the Docusign logo, and pretend official print, but the rest of it was nonsense. Looking at the real Docusign website I found they have switched to a new logo and the email had both the old and new ones displayed.
I had to wait several hours before I had the time to go direct to PayPal and found there was no mention of any such pending or past transaction. What a pain in the a$$.
Despite it purportedly being sent by Docusign, just below it, the email address is: Victor FromPayPaI, feliciaramirez320@gmail.com. Come on man, is Victor using someone’s private email as part of an “official” Docusign review and signature email?
Also, the email was sent to Adventure Wife from someone at Docusign but the To: line was being sent to someone named Penelope From PayPal who is obvious to us both-not my wife. Even discarding the lingering suspicion I may have purchased a gun without her knowledge and have a second undisclosed wife, (I might have the ambition for either one, but where would I get the time and energy?)
COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY HISTORICAL SIDENOTE: I once had a crush on a Penelope a long time ago, but it waned quickly in the 5th grade. Ms Pittstop did not answer my crayon laced letters, and was pretty damned quick with a restraining order in 1971 if I do say so. She was soon replaced by a certain red head named Josie who played in an all girl band with cat costumes with long tails and ears for hats, who was more amenable to 11 year old Saturday morning fans.
From: Victor FromPayPaI via Docusign <dse_na4@docusign.net>
To: Penelope FromPayPaI <noreply1@sharp66.shop>
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2025 at 05:34:01 AM CST
Subject: Reminder: Payment will reflect on your account within 24 hours
The phrase “Payment will reflect on your account within 24 hours” is a bit stilted and I am always looking for bad English in these potential scams. Next I looked closer at the addresses.
I poked dse_na4@docusign.net into the internet search engine and Microsoft itself identified this exact address as being associated with phishing scams since 2022.
The noreply1@sharp66.shop is an obvious scam address. Why would a personal email or a business email regarding money have a no reply box?
The English used in the scam is pretty good, but that “Springfield Armory Gun” was odd to me and I did not even try to run the IP addresses for any of the purported people in the email as I had enough to show it was nefarious.
I did not push any of the included oh so convenient buttons to review and sign this phishing document, but I did look up the included phone number for the billing support team- and it comes back Royal Moving Company in Denver. Maybe Penelope lives in Denver now with Victor and Amelia.
These damned scams are getting better than they used to be. You have probably fended them off as well. Putting a firearm into the phishing did not entice my wife but of course drew my attention.
Now, I demand to see the candy or the ammunition before I get in the van. Fool me two or three times and I catch on.
I received 3 of these supposedly from PayPal. I don’t use PayPal. The 3 emails all came through at 5:44AM, advising a docusign error occurred. All 3 were identical amounts as well $455.11. Thet didn’t indicate a vendor or product. When I hovered my mouse over the sender it was gibberish. Aggravating scammers.
Oops. I left out that you can forward these emails to: spoof@paypal.com
Michael, I have gotten email scam/phishing correspondence for many years, much of what I get are “to” undisclosed recipients, one of the first indicators, many times a fake “invoice” is attached or in the text, have had invoices from “Geek Squad” which I think is Best Buys tech support, but I have not shopped at Best Buy for many, many moons, and then very little, and NEVER used the Geek Squad, just sayin’.
Lately I get scam/spam phone calls trying to convince me of a “free” gift card, just a minimal “fee” to get a credit card number for false charges. If I get through to a “real person” I cuss them up and down a few times and demand they remove me from phone list. I always block and delete number but get same spiel on another number and go through the same process again. Sometimes get text scam/spam too. Why can’t these idiots just get a real job and leave normal people alone?
I had two phone scams recently claiming they were the fraud department checking to see if I made suspicious purchase in London. They just needed 8 of my account numbers- they already had the last four digits. They were excellent scammers including when I refused to comply elevated my call to a “supervisor”. I was appreciative of just how smooth they had gotten. “You have all of my numbers.” Called the real company fraud dept to ensure it was all BS. Two times same style call in two weeks.
When they call with their scams, I keep them talking, and waste their time. My personal record is 36 minutes. Now guessing I am on a do not call list for scammers. Bengali dude was mad!