Everyone has likely heard from someone who has a large sum in foreign currency and needs a willing US intermediary to do little to nothing in exchange for a big fee. Or you have heard from a foreign prince with an enticing offer. Or, you have been contacted about helping with a serious and egregious situation that requires your particular skill set. The person who invented email likely never saw this all coming.
The spam filters take a layer off the cake each day. Nonetheless, I continue to receive and review a significant volume of emails that are simply not worthwhile or worthy of attention. I have a system for opening and evaluating them that is reasonably sophisticated. In addition, I spend a fair amount of time studying the avoidance of email consequences.
In a new twist, I am now the target of a summons from the Federal High Court. I have not been this excited to get an email in some time.
I am too smart to click on the link "to view the document." And I am fairly familiar with the great state of Georgia (area code 404). I know enough about the state to know it has no Federal High Court. If there were such a court, I think I would have heard about it by now. I Googled it nonetheless. And I found that someone out there was likely using Gemini, which informed me that "The Federal High Court" is the Federal District Courts.
The actual Google results, however, located only one "Federal High Court" response, and that was in Nigeria. That country has a "country code" of 234, and I could not find any phone number there that begins with "(404)." Go figure.
As a side note, it used to be that you could tell where someone was by an area code. Nowadays, that just tells you where someone activated their phone or where they chose to have their area code assigned.
But what is the point? There are several. First, there are many villains in this world striving to take what is yours. Sometimes that is in person. I recently heard a story related by a man who stood on a crowded metro. As the car filled, the crowd compressed, and he found himself unable to even move. As he later exited, he realized his cell phone had become the property of someone who had apparently enjoyed greater mobility and a certain dexterity.
Or, the villain may steal remotely. The High Court email above is obviously about such an attempt. And that is the second point: why do people send such ridiculous, fictitious emails? The simple answer is because it works. I am confident that if these emails did not work, the senders would quit wasting their time and ours. Someone is clicking on these links!
While that particular query is not necessarily the best, it must work, or they would quit. According to one industry source, there are "3.4 billion spam emails sent every day." Google "blocks around 100 million phishing emails daily" (a preposterously small percentage). And almost half of all emails "sent in 2022 were spam." That is a lot of work, effort, and patience.
Millions of dollars at risk. A nearly constant parade of risk. And it is working. If you don't believe the emails and successfully ignore them, the miscreants will call you instead. Pew Research reported in 2025 that "a majority of U.S. adults report getting scam phone calls (68%), emails (63%), or text messages (61%) at least weekly."
The predominant victims are hard to categorize, as this is impacting all age groups. Nonetheless, the Institute for Healthcare Policy at the University of Michigan says 75% of "adults age 50-80" suffer from attempts, and 30% "experienced fraud." It is a pandemic in which the most vulnerable in our society are attacked, seemingly most frequently.
Recently, I reported The Fake Hearing Scam (February 2026). That highlighted malcontents engaging in social media, spamming, and fraud to separate injured workers from their money. And the miscreant's march continues.
We all agree that these scams are a problem. Well, almost all of us, Pew reports, "more than nine in ten" of us, think this is a problem. A great many of us (79%) think this is a "major problem." And yet, there seems to be little we can do. Or is it that there is little we are willing to do?
The scourge of our time is likely fraud like this. It is perpetrated on the young and old but largely on vulnerable populations like our elderly. Why is there no coordinated focus on locating and trying those who commit such fraud? It seems ludicrous in today's age of artificial intelligence that we cannot do better with spotting and stopping this scourge.
