"I'm Stuck in [foreign country]" Scams

These phishing scams encourage recipients to send money or account information to the person supposedly "stuck" in a foreign country, or a person who is in need for a similar reason. These emails appear to come from someone the recipient knows--they look like they are from a familiar email address, and are signed with a familiar name. However, in this case, the familiar email address was hacked. The hacker set up forwarding from the victim's email to their account and used the victim's account to spam the address book. This way, the hacker could steal sensitive information and thus steal money.

If you receive an email like this, it did NOT come from who you think it did, and is a money-stealing scam. If you know the person the email came from, consider calling them, emailing an alternate address, or personally letting them know that their account might have been compromised.

Below is an example of the "I'm stuck" scam: