Category Archives: Deals and Steals

Such a deal!

Unlikely Tour Reservation Scam

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How many times have I gotten these? Too many to count.

Got this in my email inbox for Flying M Air yesterday.

Reservation Email
This simple message has plenty of flags to indicate it’s a scam.

Looks good, huh? Three days worth of helicopter tours for four people. Cha-ching!

It’s fake, of course. Want to know how I can tell? Here are the flags:

  • “Vacation in your state.” Which state is that? Believe it or not, I’m still getting requests from people who think I still operate in Arizona. (I left the state in 2013.) The vagueness of this screams “boilerplate” or “template.” It also makes me wonder how many other tour operators got the exact same message yesterday.
  • “Reservation for 2 couples.” My aircraft only holds three passengers. Martin obviously hasn’t done his homework before dangling his credit card.
  • “Confirm availability and total cost.” How could I possibly calculate a “total cost” if I have no idea what he wants?
  • No phone number. The sender hasn’t provided any method other than an email address to contact him. Why not?
  • Sender Gmail account. Yes, I know that real people have Gmail accounts, too. But do they usually spell their last names wrong in the account address?

Yes, this is a scam. I actually played along with one of these years ago to see what he wanted. You can read the details here. How interesting to see that it’s still being played. I guess there are enough suckers out there to make trying it worthwhile.

Don’t get scammed. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Phishing Scam: Mailbox is Almost Full

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Here’s a new twist on an old scam.

Got this email today:

Phishing Email

If you can’t read it, it says:

Your mailbox is almost full.

Dear [redacted]@marialanger.com,

3840MB 4096MB
Current size Maximum size

Please reduce your mailbox size. Delete any items you don’t need from your mailbox and empty your Deleted Items folder. Click here to do reduce size automatically.

Of course, the “click here” link takes you to a PHP page on a site that has nothing to do with my email server, my domain name, my ISP, the sender’s domain name, or even Google, which, for some reason appears in the footer with yet another link to the same page.

Come on, folks! Don’t be fooled into clicking links in email messages, especially if they’re from someone you don’t know. This is how hackers get into your email and social networking accounts or even your bank accounts. This is how they send email messages to your friends, trying to lure them into the same phishing scams.

Spread the word, educate the folks who don’t know better.

A Note on Apple Stock

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I’m doing some math this morning and I thought I’d share an old image.

In January 1997, in Apple’s darkest days, I purchased 50 shares of Apple stock for $16.75 per share.

Back in those days, you bought actual stock certificates and I kept mine in a safe at home. Over the years, I bought and sold more Apple stock using a brokerage account. Meanwhile, these shares snug in the safe, began to grow. Not only did they grow in market value as Apple rebounded and became the major technology player it is today, but there were three stock splits, 2:1, 2:1, and 7:1 over the years.

Apple Stock Certificate
Back in 1997, Apple stock looked like this.

I transferred the stock certificate and its offspring to a brokerage account before the 7:1 split, so it would be more liquid. I sold it off in bits and pieces over the years to help finance various other investments like my first helicopter and a small apartment building I used to own. Because of the splits, there were always shares to sell. In 2013 and 2014, these shares were instrumental in helping finance my crazy divorce and build my new home.

I still have some of those original shares. If you do the math — which I did this morning — you’ll discover that the shares I have left have a cost basis of about 60¢ per share. This morning, Apple opened at $114.57 per share. If I still had all the shares from this original investment (which, sadly, I do not), it would be worth $160,398 — all from a $837 investment by someone with faith in a failing company.