I wrote recently about these random WhatsApp text messages that I occasionally get from unknown young women. Presumably, they are the first stages of a scam that will reveal itself if I reply, which of course I never do.
But I am interested in the logic by which they hope to ensnare me and the latest leaves me completely baffled. It reads in its entirety:
“Uncle Ryan will send you to pick me up at the airport next month in a rolls Royce. I’m going back to Ohio soon.”
First off, unlike the earlier ones, this one is oddly specific, mentioning Uncle Ryan, a rolls (sic) Royce, and Ohio. The only part of it that has any connection to me is Ohio.
Also, why does Uncle Ryan need me to pick you up? Why can’t he do it himself or assign the task to the driver of the car? I am a busy person, and cannot drop everything just to go to the airport for no reason.
I am getting a lot of robo-calls recently, I would estimate one per day. I never pick up, but they leave messages on my answering machine. I have no idea what it’s about because they are in Chinese.
Maybe they’re from Uncle Ryan.
One presumes if you’d pursue this, that you’d find on the day that the Rolls payment had a glitch, so to fix it, Uncle needed you to give him your bank account and routing numbers that morning. A few minutes later, your account will be empty. No further trace of anyone. Tempting?
I received a text that said “Excuse me, are you the golf instructor Aana [sic] introduced me to? This is Shirley.” That looked like an honest wrong number, I get those once in a while. I sent back “no, but I can teach you you play sousaphone.”
A few days later I received exactly the same text from a different number, including the same misspelling. So yeah, a weird scam of some kind. What do they expect to get?
#3: I think someone is so very dedicated to finding their golf instructor that they hired a bot to spam everyone in your area code in hopes of finding them. Must’ve been a good instructor!
Mano, possibly the message’s purpose is just to confirm that the contacted number/address connects to a human who can be spammed. The text is not relevant.
Like Reginald @#1, I currently also get robo-calls. They say “This is a message from the federal police. …”, literally. Which is a bit strange. The official language where I live is not English.
Mano, since you are back to blogging, I hope that means you are no longer feeling poorly.
moarscienceplz @#7,
Yes, I am feeling better, thanks!
What Jörg wrote @5. A validation protocol.
“Uncle Henry will send you to pick me up at the airport next month in a rolls Royce. I’m going back to New York soon.”
The message from 570 664 0723 received on 4/27. As you say, I can’t understand what the hook is to this scam.