Attention!

Do not fall for email scams asking for a favor using the minister’s name with a made up email. A creative but ill-intentioned person or network is using clergy names to send emails from created email addresses to ask for gift cards. You may get an email that sounds something like this:

Good morning,

I need a favor from you
Email me as soon as you get this

God Bless
Rev. Karen Gustafson

When you respond, they give you a story about someone they need you to send gift cards to. This is a scam. Do not fall for it. You can report these through your email:

  • Mark them as phishing or report them as Spam or block the Sender based on their content. If the sender is using another Gmail address (please confirm before reporting), use this form to report abuse – I would like to report a Gmail user who has sent messages that violate the Gmail Program Policies and/or Terms of Use.

  • You can’t prevent spoofing. So, recipients must remain alert, particularly for messages supposedly from people they trust which they may find under Spam or vice versa.

  • As a rule of thumb, if ever suspicious about any email, check whether the email was authenticated by the sending domain. Click on the drop-down arrow underneath the sender’s name (next to the receiver’s name), and make sure the domain seen next to the ‘mailed-by’ or ‘signed-by’ lines matches the sender’s email address. e.g: If you see messages claiming to be from google.com, but are not properly authenticated as coming from google.com, then they are phishing messages and you must report them. For additional details, click on this link: Email authentication

  • You can also report the gift card scam to the Federal Trade Commission in DC. Many of these crimes are under-reported and discounted as not traceable or not worth pursuing by most organizations and people who experience this type of crime. FTC has a hot line to call about these types of scams and they appreciate getting as much information as possible from concerned citizens and since they used your e-mail information you should contact them and give them all the information you have available to you.
    Federal Trade Commission
    Washington, DC
    Eastern Regional Center
    (202) 326-2222

We appreciate you letting us know that this is happening and are grateful that so many are recognizing this as a scam. However, it is difficult to respond to the flood of emails and texts asking about this. Please know we regret that this is happening and there is little we can do to prevent it. If you can report or mark the email as phishing, that is helpful. If you’d like to report the incident to us, you can use the contact form on the website at https://ucevanston.org/contact/