Internet scammers have targeted retired Scottish Army officers with a new e-mail fraud based on the plot of the George Clooney film Three Kings.
Set at the end of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the movie script centres on a small group of US soldiers "liberating" a fortune in bullion and dollars hidden in one of Saddam Hussein's desert bases.
The e-mails now being sent out purport to come from a Major Ralph Harland of First Battalion, the Royal Irish Regiment (RIR), who claims that he and one of his men have "managed to move funds belonging to some demised persons" in Iraq and now need help to transfer it to the UK.
He says he has almost £5m in US dollars and is willing to share it on a 60%-40% basis with anyone who would put up the cash to ship it out "in two large metallic boxes".
The e-mail, which was passed to The Herald, insists there are "no strings attached", but asks for confidential telephone and fax numbers and other contact details.
The officer concerned said yesterday: "This guy claims to be the commanding officer of the RIR. But he's only a major. A battalion commander is a lieutenant-colonel, the next rank above major.
"It also occurred to a few of us who received these e-mails that the Royal Irish last served in Iraq in 2003 and have since done a tour in Afghanistan. They are now at their base at Fort George near Inverness.
"It's an obvious con, but I would not like to see anyone caught out in a moment of weakness. Whoever's behind it seems to have taken the surname of Harland' from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast to give his identity a Northern Irish flavour."
As The Herald reported last December, many of the same veteran officers were targeted in scams offering them a share of Saddam Hussein's looted personal fortune or a cut of Iraqi oil revenues in return for banking details. The names on the e-mail list are prominent figures whose bylines appear in military journals or whose personal details are documented in the Army List.
A security source said yesterday: "These are all variations on the Nigerian 419 scam, named after the reference number for fraud in the Nigerian penal code. It depends on persuading victims to part with their own cash for permutations of legal fees, bribes, banking transfers and shipping costs.
"Those who respond usually send a relatively small initial sum to help with the transfer of funds. The scammers then use the information to hack into the victim's identity and strip out his bank account."
A spokesman for the specialist fraud section run by the Metropolitan Police and the Serious Organised Crime Agency said thousands of fraudulent e-mail scams were detected every week.
"Most of them are run by organised criminal gangs in Lagos, but we have also seen similar cons out of Eastern Europe. One of the problems is that many of those who fall for them are then too embarrassed to report what they regard as their own foolishness."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article