As seems to happen every year or so, a new instance of email from a scammer to our congregation members surfaced this week, appearing to be from Rev. Jeremiah and asking for money and/or favors from the people receiving the email. Please note that this email was NOT from Jeremiah, nor from anyone associated with our church in any way.
A few clues that the email was a phishing scam and not a real request from our minister:
- The name in the “from” line was “Jeremiad Lao S.” (not Jeremiah Lal Shahbaz Kalendae).
- The “from” address was ministeruusm @ GMail.com, and not minister@uusm.org.(Please note that all email from the church and its employees comes from @uusm.org addresses, NOT GMail addresses. Anyone anywhere can create an address that looks like uusmxxx@gmail.com or xxxuusm.gmail.com, but only people actually associated with our church will have @uusm.org addresses.)
- Our minister and other church members will never ask you to run personal errands, or to send personal contributions (including cash, gift cards, or similar items), outside of well-established, fully public, and fully publicized fundraising efforts.
Jeremiah himself sent a note to members later the day this happened, containing a few more details:
“It is some to our attention that our community is again being targeted by phishing church scammers. This is an elaborate form of cyber crime where people send messages that appear as though they are coming from the minister and are sent to congregation members requesting you send them gift cards or money. It is not a hack because they create a false email address that isn’t my email. Please know that no one from the church would solicit help or funds in this ways. If you mistakenly sent them funds, you can usually recover them from the company you utilized because this is an established crime that companies and religious communities have to deal with frequently. Lets stay informed and keep our community safe and aware.”
As noted above, these kinds of scams are both sneaky and – unfortunately – fairly frequent (as well as common to many congregations in addition to ours), and there is nothing we can do about them aside from making sure our members are fully aware of the issue, and know as much as possible about how to avoid becoming victims.
To read more about past attempts targeting our church, see the following stories/links (each of which contains even links to more previous warnings):
Scammers at it Again – This Time with Fake Texts to Church Members
