Today the Department of New York once again has been alerted to a spoofing of Commandant Lawton’s email address, he has not been hacked, the Scammer simply created an email account, and set the Commandants name as the sender.

Before I outline what the scammer wants you to believe it is the real thing, know this, the Department of New York, or its officers will NEVER ask you purchase gift cards. This applies to all levels from the Detachment up to the National level.

We have covered this in the our Ground Pounder issue 2-22 in the article “PHISHING (PRONOUNCED FISHING) Don’t Take the Bait”. We recommend that you you download it and review it again. We do not want out members to scammed by these criminals.

These spoofing attempts are becoming more and more frequent. They will do it via email, or text message, so beware, and don’t take the bait.

On the most current spoofing attempt, the scammer is using the email address [email protected].

Upon initial contact the scammer will state that he is busy, and has a request, and only respond via email, no calls. That is a red flag.

In this case, knowing is was a scammer, I asked him to Zelle me the money first. In the past, that usually stopped further communication, however this one was a little more persistent and they replied with the following:

This ended our conversation. If you get a message like this STOP! Block the sender and delete the message. We recommend that you do not reply. If you have question if it is a real message or not, contact the sender using a verified good phone number. Do not use numbers or email addresses provided in the email or a text message.