In recent days, fraudulent emails have been widely circulated, in a non-targeted manner, under the banner of the Prince’s Carabinier Company. These have been dispatched from various email addresses, some of which have managed to bypass the anti-spam filters of email service providers.
These emails are a part of a malicious phishing campaign, aiming to defraud potential victims who might respond to the messages. Crafted with evident lack of finesse, these fraudulent emails inform recipients that they have allegedly been implicated in a procedure and urge them to open an attached PDF document and send an email in response.
The deceptive summons claim to pertain to alleged "criminal proceedings for sexual offenses" targeted at the message's recipient.
Recipients of this message are strongly advised to:
- NOT RESPOND to the sender
- Avoid opening the attached PDF document
- Forward the received email to cyber@gouv.mc
- Flag the email and/or sender as 'junk' or 'spam' in their mailbox
- Delete the message permanently after reporting it
Furthermore, it's essential to remember that:
- The Prince’s Carabinier Company never sends such summons.
- Official email addresses used by Governmental Services always follow the format xxxx@gouv.mc
- Don’t trust the sender's displayed name, as it can be freely chosen by the perpetrator, or the email subject.
- The actual email address of the sender should be verified by clicking on the 'sender' field (on smartphones) or with a right-click (on PCs).
- Some fraudulent email addresses are designed to closely mimic legitimate ones by making minor alterations. For instance, they might replace the letter (i) with the letter (l), add a dot (.), or insert other characters to cause confusion.