Another scam – beware

This was received this morning by a number of people, purporting to come from a local resident.

"Hello good morning,

I'm writing this with tears in my eyes, sorry I did not inform you about my trip. Actually made a quick travel to Spain (Madrid) and I got mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed, all cash, cell phones and credit card were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.

We've been to the Embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and our flight leaves tomorrow but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle the bills and I may lock up.

Please I really need your financial assistance. Please, let me know if you can help us out?

Hear from you soonest.

Thanks."

It has presumably been achieved by somebody who has hacked into a genuine e-mail account and extracted the list of contacts. The giveaway (quite apart from the tone of the message which sounds nothing like the person concerned) is that the e-mail address for replies has been set up as a different one to the (genuine) e-mail address that it pretends to come from.

So we advise that you ignore this message and any similar ones, perhaps except for the occasional genuine pleas for cash from indigent sons and daughters in foreign parts!

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