Beware of scam emails purporting to be from the Police Department

In the last 48 hours, large numbers of scam emails have been sent claiming to be from the Police Department of Monaco. These emails are sent to random recipients, from a variety of different addresses, and some of them appear to evade anti-spam filters.

These emails are part of a malicious ‘phishing’ campaign designed to defraud potential victims who reply to them.

In poorly written language, these fraudulent messages inform the recipient that they are supposedly being prosecuted and ask them to open a PDF attachment and to send a reply by email.

This fake summons refers to claimed “criminal prosecution for sexual offences” against the recipient of the scam email.

• Anyone receiving this message should do as follows:

-          DO NOT REPLY TO THE SENDER

-          Do not open the attached PDF file

-          Forward the email received to cyber@gouv.mc

-          Mark the message and/or the sender as spam or junk in your email client (the programme used to access your email inbox).

-          Once you have reported it, delete the message permanently.

• As a general rule, remember that:

-          The Police Department never sends summons by email.

-          Genuine email addresses used by government departments and services always have the following format: xxxx@gouv.mc

-          Always look at the sender’s email address and not their name or the subject of the message, which they are able to choose themselves.

-          The sender’s true email address should be checked by touching the <sender> field (on a smartphone) or by right-clicking the mouse (on PC).

-          Some email addresses are created specifically to look like legitimate addresses, with just one small difference such as replacing the letter (i) with the letter (l), adding a dot (.) or another character, to create confusion.