27 April 2010

Payment by Mcdonalds Promo House Malaysia: Scam & Spam email

This is to officially inform you that you have been selected for payment by mcdonalds promo house malaysia.

Please find enclosed your payment details. Kindly complete and submit immediately to collect your cash prize!


Congratulations!


Managment.
Mcdonalds Malaysia.
00-601-2656-1229"

Again, this is another spam plus scam email in my mailbox today. However, I hope this post can help other people to avoid falling a trap.

So, why this email is a scam??
1. It is totally non-official email but the email said "This is to officially inform you that ...."
2. What is the manager name??
3. What is 00-601-2656-1229 means??

Next, let's see the attached as shown below:
"
WINNERS ONLY
C\ Don Jaime I nº11 2º
50.003 Zaragoza
WORLD WIDE
Ref: EAASL/941OYI/02/SHYN
Batch: 92/234/03889

April 25th 2010


Dear Lucky Winner,
 
THE MC DONALD'S SEASONAL PROMOTION PRIZE AWARDS WINNING NOTIFICATION.

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final draws of McDonalds Annual Promo.

The online McDonalds KL, Malaysian Annual Promo draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of 29,031 E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. However, no tickets were sold but all email addresses were assigned to different ticket numbers for representation and privacy.

After this automated computer ballot, your e-mail address emerged as one of twelve winners in the fourth category for the second prize with the following data:

Ref Number: EAASL/941OYI/02/SHYN
Batch Number: 92/234/03889
Ticket Number: 025-11464992-750

You as well as the other winners are therefore to receive a cash prize of £1,350,000 (ONE MILLION THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND BRITISH POUNDS ONLY) each from the total payout.

Your prize award has been insured with your e-mail address and will be transferred to you upon meeting the requirements, statutory obligations, verifications, validations and satisfactory report.
 To begin the claims processing of your prize winnings you are advised to contact our licensed and accredited claims agent/security company
for SECOND category winners with the information below: You are also advised to give the following information’s to the claim's agent via email

1. Full name and address:
2. Country:
3. Tel and fax number:
4. Occupation:
5. Your Reference and Batch number at the top of this mail:
6. Age:

Dr Harry Hector,
MCDONALDS PROMO CLAIMS AGENT
Email: mcdonalds.malaysia@live.com.my
Phone: 00-601-2656-1229

NOTE: All winnings must be claimed within 20 days from today. After this date all unclaimed funds would be included in the next stake.
Remember to quote your reference information in all correspondence with your claims agent.
You are to keep all lotto information away from the general public especially your reference and ticket numbers. (This is important as a case of double claims will not be entertained).

Members of the affiliate agencies are automatically not allowed to participate in this program.

Thank you and congratulations!!!
Yours faithfully,
Azmir Jaafar,
Managing Director McDonalds Malaysia."

Note: This is just a spam email.( It does not consist of receiver's name, address etc ).

Next, although the name of Managing Director is correct, why such big company need to used live mail address??? mcdonalds.malaysia@live.com.my. 

Lastly, please let me know if you have similar Ref Number, Batch Number and Ticket Number as shown below. It is very useful for us to once again verify this email is a scam email.
"
Ref Number: EAASL/941OYI/02/SHYN
Batch Number: 92/234/03889
Ticket Number: 025-11464992-750
"
Based on my experience, most of the spam emails do not change this kind of number.

To sum up, although the sender's email is very convincing, "Mcdonalds Malaysia <info@mcdonalds.com.my>",  we have sufficient evidences to proof this is a scam email, that is, based on the email address of sender and receiver.

That's all for today. More fascinating articles and sharing will be updated from time to time in Xaivier Blog. Therefore, you are welcome to subscribe our feed, look at our sitemap or simply visit our Homepage.

Written by: Xaivier Chia

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Note:
- I have drop an official email to Mcdonalds to double verify this scam email. The reply will be posted ASAP.
- Good news for all my visitors here. Eventually, I have received an reply from McDonald regarding this scam email. Feel free to take a look at the post at McDonald's Seasonal Promotion - email scam  (10/08/2010))

First edited at 29th Jan 2011 - Reason: To make it more reader-friendly.

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23 comments:

Qusyairi Hashim said...

just received one..

ZeroHero said...

I received it as well..
We have won lottery hehehe..

Xaivier Chia said...

hehehe, it was a dream. Only people, who are not greed, can stay clear and calm like us.

Anonymous said...

Ya, me too, just receive one....

Anonymous said...

just received one..hak3..it's a scam..my rationality is higher than that..=p

Unknown said...

not that I doubt McD's ability, but they need to sell 16million sets of Value Lunch meal just to pay out the cash prizes for 2nd place winners lol!

Xaivier Chia said...

Good point, Jay Chua.

Thinking logically will help us get rid of cheating.

Anonymous said...

LOL i tot is was true haha!!!
lucky i found this thru using this:-
>> mcdonalds.malaysia@live.com.my <<
to search in the google...if not i got cheated but anyway i got loads this from other countries actually haha... its a bloody scam lol...thx for the info XD

Anonymous said...

oh yeah and also the phone number...so fake =,=

Xaivier Chia said...

Yes, indeed.

Think twice, read twice, and ask twice will make your life will be more safe and happy.

Anonymous said...

haha i did call the number... the guy said its legal... but i dont know where the number from...
scam! ahah

Xaivier Chia said...

You are so free, huh?

Since the guy said that's legal, why not ask the guy bank-in price to your account?

Anyway, be careful if you do this.

If the guy ask you to pay some transaction fee, just ask he discount from the price. Hehehe...

Good luck.

Anonymous said...

No more McD. I just received one stating from Caltex

Anonymous said...

i receive it as well, check from the net, and see ur blog, its exactly the same !

Xaivier Chia said...

This is good to see you all precious comments here.

Therefore, we know we are not the only one receive this kind of email and, subsequently believe "Today is my lucky day".

Thank you.

Anonymous said...

just receive one..
this time from caltex..shit!
haha

Unknown said...

Seems like its getting to India As well....we just got it as well...its a scam...we spoke to Harry Hector..sounds like a real guy but then when we found this over the internet it juss was clear that its a scam .... thanks for the info guys....also the MD has now changed and is not who's mentioned in the email !!!

sammythewizzy said...

Just recieved the same mail today!!! I didn't expect McDonalds to get dragged into this though..

Xaivier Chia said...

Ha ha!! Well, it looks like that some spammers have attacked my blog. (I mean Anonymous ones)

Anyway, I think these spammers' "comments" are good for my visitors to learn how they spam or cheat innocent people. Therefore, I decide do not delete them.

Real gold never fear the fire.

Xaivier Chia said...

After attacking by spammers, I have decided to share this experience with my visitors at "How spammer attacks my blog".

Xaivier Chia said...

Good news for all my visitors here. Eventually, I have received an reply from McDonald regarding this scam email. Feel free to take a look at my new post at McDonald's Seasonal Promotion - email scam

Dinusha Perera said...

I'm from Sri Lanka. I responded to this mail and then again I received another mail as below.

Dear,

Lucky winner for the compliment of the day it’s our great please to respond back to your email regarding your wining prize from mcdonald company malaysia . We are herein to inform you that you’re wining prize amount the total sum of seven hundred and fifty thousand american dollars has being remitted to the HSBC.international bank here in united kingdom . Below are the bank contacts information contacts them as soon as you receive this email so that they will process your immediate transfer as well.

Email: www.mrsflorence.uk@live.com
Tel: +44-7010039946

Name: Mrs. Florence Rice
(TRANSFER MANAGER HSBC INTERNATIONAL ONLINE BANKING)

please kindly update us as soon as you contacts the payment bank
yours faithful
Dr. Harry Hector

I called the # and a guy called Peter Johnson picked the phn. I asked where Mrs. Florence Rice was he told that she has gone out of the desk. He told me to transfer 250 pound via western union to India.

THIS IS TRULY SCAM!!!.......... Damn

Xaivier Chia said...

Hi Dinusha Perera,

Thanks for your sharing. It is truly useful for us to understand how a "scam system" works.

A summary of scam procedure is shown below:
1. Randomly send spam email to lots of people and waiting for "opportunity".

2. Ask people to deposit, transfer or pay some sort of administrative fee.

3. When the payment is paid. You will never receive the prize.

Therefore, it is always a good idea to think twice:

"If my prize is, say, USD100k, and the administrative fee is, say, USD 500. Then, just ask the person to transfer USD80k to my account and the remaining USD20k just give the person as tips."

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