Stranded in London Scam

CNN writer receives scam email too.

Last week, a high school friend (someone we hadn't seen in 40 years) send us an email pleading for our help. She and her family were stranded in London, after being mugged and all their money stolen. She needed us to urgently wire her money so that the family could get back to the states.

Now to begin with, this sounded fishy. Why would someone we hadn't seen in decades ask US of all people for our help? That's when we turned to Snopes.com, the best scam detective service on the Internet, to see if this plea was real or not.

With a quick search of the terms - money, robbed, stranded - up popped a SCAM Report that contained an almost word-to-word repeat of the email we received. Also, a real-life story of a how this email had upset and frightened a couple when they received the same email from their grandson.

The moral of this story is if a relative or friends say they are stranded in some foreign city, BEWARE and check out Snopes.