Getting mail about Presbytery? Might not be from the good and kind presbytery folks but from scammers and fraudsters looking to get your money!

It appears criminals have harvested Committee on Ministry or Presbytery group email lists to target (spear phish) Presbyters with requests for gift cards and money orders that appear to come from the Presbyters. (The free service MailChimp and commercial services like Constant Contact exist to email to groups without revealing emails to scammers and thieves.) The spoofed sender didn’t do anything wrong, except be on a list of emails on a machine or email account that malware controlled by criminals infected and harvested emails.

Email clients vary, but one can look at “details” or “headers” or “source” to find red flags such as the from email address is not the same as the reply address. One may think one is replying to the good Pastor Pat, but the email is going to the criminal at “replytt021@gmail.com”

Usually there is a option to “Report Phishing” or “Mark as Spam” instead of replying in email clients. This might help others from getting such emails. It is not recommended to reply or contact the sender of such emails. Leave that to the professionals like James Veitch.