Internet scams have been around for as long the internet has existed itself. It must have been roughly what, a few seconds after email was invented that people realised that was a lot of money to be made by sending out phishing emails.

These emails usually contain some rubbish story and then ask for money. Despite evolving to use creative language and ever interesting storylines, they always come down to sending money somewhere. Always with the money.

Despite this template design though, fast forward to the year 2010 and people are still falling for scam emails en masse. So much so that last week NSW Fair Trading commissioner Virginia Judge issued an alert on online scams to the general public.

The irony being that the alert was only issued after Judge herself fell for the scam.

“According to the scam email, my friend, Ross Steele, was stuck in Spain, missing a wallet and no funds for accommodation or means to get back to Sydney,” she said.


No doubt Steele’s email account had been compromised and thus a bulk email had been sent out to his contact list. Typically such email hijacks occur when idiots people open dubious attachments or install suspicious software.

Now one would imagine the first port of call after receiving such an email address would be the telephone. It’s 2010, people carry their mobiles with them all the time when they travel.

Of course these experienced hackers were one step ahead of common sense:

“The email also claimed I was unable to be contacted by phone,” Steele said, adding that at least five of his friends had sent money.


‘Unable to be contacted by phone but I’m using the internet and please send me money’?

Why on Earth didn’t any of these people’s ‘something’s wrong’ blinkers go up? Had any of those five friends (NSW Fair Trading minister Virginia Judge included), they’d have quickly found out that Steele ‘was in fact in Sydney, having never left the country.’

Thus is the reason scamming people on the internet continues to be a profitable venture.

‘Hmm, my mate just sent me an email from Spain asking for money. He’s using the internet in a well known capital city but apparently can’t use the phone.

What do I do? I know, I’ll blindly send him some money!’

The irony of the fair trading commissioner being caught out is delicious and I find it highly presumptuous for her to release an alert after only having fallen for the scam herself.

Falling for the good old Western Union scam email and then sending out an alert because you assume the nation is as naive as yourself takes giant balls.

Bravo Ms Judge.

The only way this story could have been more delicious is if somehow Stephen Conroy was involved. Probably a good thing he wasn’t though, he’d probably have wired half the national treasury to stop the scams coming through the portal.

Of course when he was inevitably caught out he’d then he’d try and blame it on evil Russian mobsters…


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