What Are Mystery Compensation & Funds Recovery Scams?

[Roxy]

When someone you don’t know contacts you via email, and wants to send you a very large sum of money, it is obviously a scam. Many of these scams follow one of many standard email scam modalities, but sometimes scammers send scam emails which lack context for the large sum of money they are wanting to send you.

In these types of scams that lack proper context the scammer either fails to say where they are contacting you from and/or what company or organization they are associated with, or by what means the payment is to be made, or from whom or why you are supposed to be the recipient of these so-called funds.

Cases where there are certain elements missing from the scam email format leaves these scam emails without the possibility of being placed into one of the specific scam email categories we have created on this website. Often the emails will say that there are funds which have been recovered for one vague reason or another and are due to be paid out to you. In these instances the only thing we can ascertain is that the scam email is a typical advance-fee fraud scam and thus we simply refer to them as “Mystery Compensation Scams” or "Funds Recovery Scams".

These types of scams are in effect no different than a typical advance-fee fraud email scam, however, in most typical advance-fee scam cases the scammer will at least claim they are making contact on behalf of a bank, a government entity, a law firm, or a company wanting to do business with you, but these email don't and the scammer does not specify how they are actually associated with their so-called offer. These type of scam emails often contain only a declared amount of money slated for payment and in return there is a request for a smaller amount of money to be paid upfront to the scammer in order to receive the much larger sum of funds.

Sometimes the scammers may also list a number of government agencies, saying that certain agencies have already approved the so-called payment of funds to you, but still no clear reason is given for the so-called payment being due to you, nor does the scammer claim to be affiliated themselves with any of the agencies mentioned in the scam email.

The scammer may also ask you to contact 2-3 other people during the course of the scam that the scammer claims are also involved with the transaction. This is used as a psychological technique designed to make the transaction seem more legitimate. In most cases though you are dealing with only one scammer who is acting behind all of the various fictitious personas being presented.

The scammer will eventually ask you to send some money before any of the money being promised can be sent out to you. This is a type of scam known as Advance-Fee Fraud as already mentioned above. Advance-Fee Fraud is best described as an offer of money, merchandise, services, employment, or even romance, but where the victim is asked to pay a fee in advance to obtain whatever is being promised to them by the scammer. The main scam strategy of all advance-fee fraud scams is to try to persuade the victim to send money, and then continue to send more money to the scammer, as many times as possible, until the victim eventually runs out of money and/or goes into debt as a result of losses from the scam. And in the end, the victim never receives any of the money at all being promised by the scammer.

Please click here to read more about the psychological techniques used to deceive people with Advance-Fee Fraud scams. The following article on Wikipedia also explains more about Advance-Fee Scams in general: Wikipedia Link