A. is selling a washer/dryer on Craigslist, and received an amazing e-mail from the CEO himself. They’re doing a drawing to choose random users to send free iPads to–no strings attached! Well, except that you have to complete a bunch of affiliate offers to get the “free” iPad. And for some reason the CEO of Craigslist uses a Hotmail address. And has changed his name from Jim Buckmaster to Herman Fischer.

Hmm. Maybe something is wrong here.

This is the e-mail that A. received.

Attention C-list User,

My name is Herman Fischer, Chief executive officer of Craigslist. We have recently joined up with Apple company for a one-time promotional event today, we are giving away no cost Apple iPads to randomly selected individuals who have posted an advert on Cl. You have been selected as one of our newest winners for today. We randomly choose numbers to match up with ads on Cl and your ad matched with our latest drawing.

We have partnered up with Apple to advertise their hottest product yet, the Apple iPad. Once again, we are operating this campaign for one-day only. All you need to do is CLICK HERE [scammy URL redacted] to visit our site made for this promotion and type in your email to obtain yours for free. Just make sure you enter your email so we may locate our records to ensure that we have reserved one for you. That is it!

Congrats on winning a free Apple iPad (valued at $800). If you have any question or concerns, feel free to email me back. However, you need to claim your free iPad 1st to ensure one will be reserved for you before the deadline ends. We do understand that you may possibly not receive this email until after the deadline, but, we suggest you check the site and enter your email to see if we still have yours on hold, which we often-times do because others have not claimed theirs in time.

Herman Fischer
CEO, Craig’s list

I hate to give useful advice to scammers, but if you’re going to impersonate a CEO and spam people, take fifteen seconds to throw the words Craigslist CEO into Google and see what comes up.

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