According to this email, high-profile billionaire Warren Buffett is giving you three million dollars as part of a charity project.
Supposedly, the unexpected donation is to help you combat coronavirus as well as “strengthen your personal issues” and give to the less privileged. The email claims that your contact details were submitted by the Google Management Team and you were subsequently short-listed as one of several lucky recipients of the donation.
However, Warren Buffett did not send the email and you are not about to be given as much as 10 cents, let alone 3 million dollars.
In fact, the email is a typical advance fee scam designed to trick you into sending your money and personal information to criminals.
If you reply, you will be told that you need to send money upfront before your “donation” can be processed. The scammer, still posing as Warren Buffett, will claim that the money is needed to cover various expenses such as insurance, tax, banking, and legal fees. He will insist that the money must be paid in advance and can not be deducted from the donation itself.
If you fall for this trick and actually send money, you will likely receive further requests for even more money to pay even more imaginary expenses. When he has taken as much of your money as he can manage, the scammer will simply disappear. You will no longer be able to contact him. You will have almost no chance of recovering any of the funds that you have sent. Nor, of course, will you ever receive the promised $3 million, which never existed in the first place.
Furthermore, during the course of the scam, the criminal may have been able to trick you into divulging a large amount of your personal and financial information. He may be able to use this information to steal your identity.
Scams like this are very common and have been around in various forms for many decades. Despite this, such scams still gain new victims all around the world every day.
Be wary of any email, text, social media message, fax, or letter that promises you a large sum of money out of the blue.
More information about Advance Fee Scams
An example of the scam email:
This is a personal email directed to you. My name is Warren Buffett, I and My wife and have voluntarily decided to donate the sum of THREE MILLION Dollar to you as part of our own charity project to improve the lots of 15-20 lucky individuals all over the world plus 15 close friends and family.We believe that this wonderful opportunity came to us from God and we cannot keep it to ourselves alone, Your contact was submitted to us by Google Management Team and you received this email because we have short listed you as one of the lucky recipients, If you have received this email then you are one of the lucky winner and all you have to do is get back to us this email ( info@nationfundsdonation.com ) with your particulars so that we can send your details to the pay-out bank.You can verify this by visiting the web pages below to see our interview and send your response back to us.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-leads-giving-list-donating-billions-charity-years-billionaires-2020-1-1028833145
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett
And one more thing, this donation is made out to you as to enable you strengthen your personal issues and mostly to generously help us extend hands of giving to the less privilege, orphans and charity organizations within your locality and to enable you to combat corona virus by getting the homeless out of the street and to also get some hospital equipment for some hospital in your country.
As you do this God will bless you and see you through.
We await your urgent response Via email: [removed]
Good-luck,
Warren Buffett
Importance Notice
After considerable thought and with an ache in my heart, I have decided that the time has come to close down the Hoax-Slayer website.These days, the site does not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and I do not have the financial resources to sustain it going forward.
Moreover, I now work long hours in a full-time and physically taxing job, so maintaining and managing the website and publishing new material has become difficult for me.
And finally, after 18 years of writing about scams and hoaxes, I feel that it is time for me to take my fingers off the keyboard and focus on other projects and pastimes.
When I first started Hoax-Slayer, I never dreamed that I would still be working on the project all these years later or that it would become such an important part of my life. It's been a fantastic and engaging experience and one that I will always treasure.
I hope that my work over the years has helped to make the Internet a little safer and thwarted the activities of at least a few scammers and malicious pranksters.
A Big Thank You
I would also like to thank all of those wonderful people who have supported the project by sharing information from the site, contributing examples of scams and hoaxes, offering suggestions, donating funds, or helping behind the scenes.I would especially like to thank David White for his tireless contribution to the Hoax-Slayer Facebook Page over many years. David's support has been invaluable, and I can not thank him enough.
Closing Date
Hoax-Slayer will still be around for a few weeks while I wind things down. The site will go offline on May 31, 2021. While I will not be publishing any new posts, you can still access existing material on the site until the date of closure.Thank you, one and all!
Brett Christensen,
Hoax-Slayer
