by Walter Boomsma, MSG Communications Director
If you’re tired of hearing about scams, I get it. I am, too. But you might find this story interesting because of the coincidences and how good the attempt is! The perp gets an “A” for effort.
In what is undoubtedly a strange irony, I have a personal Capital One account. One thing I appreciate about it is that Capital One does an excellent job of spotting questionable transactions. Even more ironic, I made a transaction last Saturday that was legitimate but a bit weird (because I split a dinner check, it looked like I had given a 300% tip). I received an email and text message from Capital One asking me if I did make it. The system worked. Quite well, actually.
Today I received another Fraud Alert that looked like it came from Capital One. At first, I thought it was related. The first clue that something was wrong is that it was addressed to me as the webmaster of the Maine State Grange Website. As far as I know, MSG doesn’t have an account, and if it did, I wouldn’t be the contact. But the appearance of the email was almost identical to the one I’d received questioning the huge tip. (I’ve marked a few of the giveaways on the screenshot at the bottom.)
I’m sharing this because it does involve an attempt to scam the Grange. But there’s another important reason to share it. We don’t have to live in fear of being scammed. We do have to be disciplined and learn to trust ourselves when attempts are made. A simple motto is “Don’t.” A slightly longer one is “Curiosity killed the cat.” I admit, I was tempted to see where this was going. Instead, I reported it to Capital One.
