A pair of national U.S. philatelic organizations were recently targeted by online scammers, with one group losing nearly $50,000 USD (about $67,000 Cdn.).
At the United States Stamp Society (USSS) annual general meeting at Westpex 2019 this April, USSS President Nicholas Lombardi announced the loss to members in attendance. A full report was published in the June edition of the monthly USSS journal, The United States Specialist.
“The loss, though unfortunate, represented less than 10 percent of our 2017 year-end financial assets,” wrote Lombardi in the June journal, attributing the loss to an online “phishing” scam.
“Since then steps have been taken to prevent this from happening in the future.”
PHISHING
A form of cybercrime, phishing can see targets contacted by email, phone or text message by someone posing as a legitimate institution in an attempt to uncover sensitive data such as passwords, banking and credit card information, addresses and more.
There are more than 100 billion spam emails sent daily, targeting 85 per cent of organizations worldwide and causing damages exceeding $1 billion USD, according to phishing.org, a free online resource for information-technology professionals.
AFDCS ALSO TARGETED
The American First Day Cover Society (AFDCS) was also targeted this spring.
AFDCS President Lloyd de Vries recently received an email from “AFDCS President Chris Lazaroff,” who was requesting a money transfer for “Veterans in Hospice Care.”
Aside from being the current president, de Vries knew the email was a scam because past president Lazaroff’s incorrect mailing address was listed within the email.
De Vries warned the AFDCS executive committee, but there were no losses in this attempt.