Warning: be aware of fraudulent emails purporting to come from Department of Justice

© DR

In recent days, fraudulent emails sent in the name of Mr Eric Arella, the Police Commissioner, have been widely circulated, in an untargeted manner. The emails have been sent from different email addresses, in some cases eluding email providers’ anti-spam filters.

This is a malicious phishing email campaign aimed at defrauding potential victims who respond to the message.

These fraudulent emails, which are poorly phrased, inform recipients that they have allegedly been implicated in proceedings. They ask recipients to send a response by email.

This fake notification mentions alleged “criminal proceedings for incidents of a sexual nature” initiated against the message recipient.

• If you receive one of these messages:

- DO NOT RESPOND TO THE SENDER
- Do not open any attachments
- Forward the email received to cyber@gouv.mc
- Report the email as spam and/or block the sender
- Once reported, permanently delete the message from your mailbox

• More generally, please note that:

- The Department of Justice never sends out notifications of this nature.
- The only email addresses used by government departments are in the following format: xxxx@gouv.mc .
- Users should not trust the sender’s title, which can be chosen at will by the message author, or the subject of the message.
- The sender’s real email address should be checked by holding your finger on the <sender> field (on a smartphone) or right-clicking on it (on a PC).
- Some email addresses are specially created to look like legitimate addresses with just a tiny detail changed, such as replacing the letter (i) with the letter (l), or adding a full stop (.) or other character to generate confusion.