Email Hacked then contacts are emailed by scammer

Hi,
This week I received a text from a friend, worried about an email she'd had from me. When I went to check my email I found that my password no longer worked, and that my secret question had been changed.

I've notified my email provider of all of these things, and commenced acount recovery, and in doing that had the email provider email me at an old address, that at one stage was offiliated with the account. In the inbox, the most recent message in fact, was an email from ostensibly from myself, so I was able to see first hand, the scammers work.

The scam is one that I actually saw a few weeks ago, that a friend of mine was victim of. The email is below.

Hello,
How are you doing today? i want you to know that I'm writing this with tears in my eyes My reason for writing you is that am currently travel in United Kingdom to visit my ill Aunt because the news of her illness arrived to me as " AN EMERGENCY " and she's suffering from a critical uterine-fibroid and needs family support to keep her going, her condition is deteriorating and the doctor told me that she will under-go a surgery to keep her alive because her fibroid has gotten worse and has done a lot of damages to her abdominal area. They will require a deposit because they are inviting professional surgeons from Israel to perform the (hysterectomy) operation because it had gotten way-out of hand for them to handle. That brings me more to why I am written you. I need a financial help of ($3000) from you to deposit for her surgery cos I've traveled down here with little cash i have at hand, i didn't expect things to be the way it is right now. I really need this money from you soon because am in a terrible and tight situation here, I have48hrs to get the money before the surgeons arrive. Even if you can't afford the whole money i will appreciate whatever you are able to come up with,because i don't even know your financial status before asking you of such amount of money. Please am waiting to read back from you soon so that i will know my faith and the next step to take.Please let me know if i should send you my payment details on how to send the money to me.I promise that i will pay you back as soon as i return for my trip.

In addition, they have also hacked into my facebook account, and changed my email and password there.

I sent an email back (having changed all my details on the account I'm using, to see how much detail they would be willing to go into. I received this response.

Glad you replied back XXX my aunt is really sick and i need to help her out of this situation and also i was called urgently when she started it so i was in hurray and could not take enough money with me,what i need from you now is to wired my $3000 to my name via Western Union i'll have to show my passport as ID to pick it up here and i promise to pay you back as soon as i get back home.

Here's the info you need at western union location below:

Name: XXXXXXXX
Location - 125 Ty Glas Road Llanishen
London CF14 5FP United Kingdom

Kindly email me the transfer details as soon as you have it done.please let me know if you are heading out to western union outlet now.
Thanks

I've replied suggesting I'm coming to London and would like to catch up. But I'm about at the end of playing with this person. I have an ip address for the emails suggesting a location near Witchita, and it's a Microsoft Corp address. I'm loath to post any most details, as they are essentially my own that the hacker has stolen. I'd appreciate any help or advice.

Welcome to Scamwarners.
It's quite a common scam, but the email usually asks for money as you have been mugged abroad. I don't think I've seen that variant before.
Had you received a phishing email, saying that your email account would be closed unless you replied with your details including password, and would your email account have given the scammer access to Facebook? If not, you need to scan your computer for a keylogger.
The scammer is probably in Nigeria judging by the wording. WU payments can be collected anywhere.

I ended up actually being able to get my email back, and subsequently my facebook.
I've done a scan of my computer and there is no keylogger, but my password was a name ... something that I've changed.

When I got back into facebook it showed a map of where my last login was, somewhere near Logos in Nigeria.

My email was on a divert to a yahoo account, which I've written down. Is there somewhere that I should report this?

Thanks for your help, and I've given up baiting this person. This morning the email that I received (after offering to meet 'myself' and the aunt in London) indicated that they had both moved to Spain. More funny than anything else.

My email was on a divert to a yahoo account, which I've written down. Is there somewhere that I should report this?
.

Not really. The police won't be interested as there isn't anything they can do against anonymous foreign scammers. Forum policy is that we can't have it posted here as there is no evidence of it being used for scamming. Not that we doubt you, we certainly don't, but an email address on its own isn't enough. And if it was created especially to resemble yours, it wouldn't help alert other potential victims.