Forward-fee fraud involves victims being lured into sending fees of a few thousand dollars to the fraudsters via bank wire transfer, in the hope of getting access to millions of dollars in frozen or dormant bank accounts.
According to Mayur Kulkarni, a senior lead researcher with Symantec's Indian anti-spam division, using snail mail (postal services) may seem surprising in today's IT age, but it is now an effective way to bypass online security.
In a security blog about an example of this type of fraud, Kulkarni said that the text inside the letter has everything that we commonly see with email scams, except that we do not find any reply-to email addresses.
"Also, the scammer stresses that recipients must only fax the information (direct telephone and fax number), even if that means buying a new fax machine", he notes.
These types of spam campaigns are already known to be widespread online and quite possibly had been seen in the past in letter form as well.
"As always, Symantec is committed to provide maximum security to its online users. However, with this particular incident, we would like to remind users to be careful of these hand-delivered scams also", he says.