Other organisations have reported the same thing. An official is identified by the scammer, then bogus e-mails, purporting to be from that identified official, are sent to other people asking for help. Today at least two people received such an e-mail with the title “Help need urgently.......” and the text content such as “Hi Steve did you got my message”. (Yes, “got”, not “get”!)

The sender’s name appears as “Jim Burnett”, but the underlying e-mail address is the wholly bogus “postpresident103@gmail.com”.

Other addresses and content may also be used at other times.

Do not reply to these e-mails. It is not known what would happen if you did reply, but it seems likely you would be invited to part one way or another with some of your money!

Jim never got round to using e-mail. These e-mails are nothing to do with an e-mail address once set up for him but which was then never used, and contains no contacts. Equally, these e-mails are in no way connected with any e-mail facilities of this website (which are not activated). The YCA has no corporate e-mail account.

This is the price we pay for having information made public. Individuals may of course ask that their e-mail addresses or other data be removed from this website, which is the most likely source of information used. No e-mail account or website has been “hacked” – merely read.

Steve Mann,

19/02/2019