“There’s A Sermon In Here Somewhere But First a Warning!”

There is a sermon in this somewhere but it is more important that you also be aware of what is happening before writing the sermon.

A friend of mine received the following e-mail this morning:

From: “Victory Church, UK” <victoryconferencedesk@gmail.com>

Subject: Symphony of Praise – Celebration of Victory Conference 2012.

Date: July 24, 2012 6:49:27 AM EDT

Victory Church, UK.

Greenforge Way

Springvale Ind Estate

United Kingdom

NP44 3UZ

http://www.victorychurch.co.uk/

Host Pastor: Pastor Richard Taylor Email:victorychurchukdesk@gmail.com

Tel Phone: + 44 7045750464

Grace and Peace unto you ,

REQUEST FOR SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT

I am Pastor Richard Taylor of the Victory Church,United Kingdom. We are writing to invite you to be our guest speaker at this year Symphony of Praise – Celebration of Victory Conference 2012.  After reading through your profile at http://www.nyac.comThe lord has direct us to email you for this assignment .All travel arrangements,speaking fee and accommodation will be taken care of as soon as you honor this invitation.

Venue

Spurgeon Hall (Church Hall)

Greenforge Way

Springvale Ind Estate

United Kingdom

NP44 3UZ

Date : 4th to 6th of September 2012

Topic:The Effect Of Compromising God”s Standard

We will send you all binding documents including a Letter of
Invitation and Contract Agreement as soon as you honor our invitation. Email any questions you may have. We await your earliest response.

Remain Blessed

Pastor Richard Taylor

Senior Pastor

Victory Church

Tel Phone: + 44 7045750464

Now, as far as one can tell, there is such a church and the pastor of that church is the person named in the e-mail. The link to the web site is valid and that is where the fun begins. When you check the contact information for the church you get an entirely different set of e-mail addresses. Neither of the two e-mail addresses used in the e-mail match the e-mail addresses for the church or the pastor (who has his own private e-mail address and web site).
That particular information prompted me to turn to Google and see what I found. Using Victory church scam I came away with a site which gave me some additional information.

This e-mail and its variants really do nothing wrong; you are invited to preach or sing or do something in return for your expenses being covered. So you are tempted to reply and begin the process. Their reply is to ask that you submit a certain sum of money by Western Union transfer to cover the cost of the work permits you will need for doing the work in the United Kingdom as well as providing your bank information so that the funds can be transferred to you quickly and efficiently. At this point, one either realizes what is transpiring or is taken for a fool.

I guess those who have the 2.5 million dollars in a bank still want to give away the money but they realize that most people would rather work for the funds than simply take them. It is an interesting evolution of the Nigerian bank fund scam; I even got an e-mail from someone saying that they were an FBI agent and they needed my help tracking down one of the Nigerians behind the scam. I might have bought the idea except that it wasn’t an official government e-mail and the e-mail addresses used weren’t official government e-mail addresses. So “they” are trying something new.
I have put notes about similar problems in “An Emerging Technical Problem”and “Continuing Thoughts on Emerging Technical Problems”.

Like I said, there is a sermon in here somewhere but take heed of the warning first.