An email scam which uses the death of the former Chilean dictator General Pinochet as a hook to attract the recipient's interest is doing the rounds, security experts have warned.
The emails use a subject line such as President of Chile who died, and claim to be sent by Captain Augusto Pinochet Molina, General Pinochet's grandson. who was discharged from the Chilean army and is seeking help to hide his fortune from the authorities.
Though the email is a hoax to convince the recipient to part with large sums of money, it is made to look more authentic by including links to high profile web sites such as the BBC.
However, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: Millions of scam emails like this are being sent to internet users every day.
"The best liars sprinkle their tales with the truths to fool people into believing them. Internet users need to wise up to these kinds of tricks to prevent themselves from being sucked in and having their identity, and potentially finances, stolen, said Cluley.
This email con is the latest of many so-called '419' scams. These scams are named after the article of Nigerian law that deals with this kind of confidence tricks, as many originate in the African state.
Other examples of 419 scams include a message claiming to come from the persecuted widow of the late Nigerian head of state and even an African astronaut stranded on the Mir spacestation.
http://www.sophos.com/
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An email scam which uses the death of the former Chilean dictator General Pinochet as a hook to attract the recipient's interest is doing the rounds.
