Graziella Mondon presents herself as an elderly woman suffering from cancer. He says he has an inheritance of close to a million euros and wants to donate it to a stranger, on the condition that part of this amount goes to an orphanage. It doesn’t take much digging to realize that there’s virtually no truth to it.
The starting point of this scam is an email. A text written and repeated probably thousands of times. Object: Donation. Sender. Graziella Mondon. The text tells the story of Graziella, a woman of Italian origins who lives in France. In the email this woman admits to being in end of life. She explains that she has lung cancer and is ready to donate all his assets to an “honest and reliable person for the realization of the project”.
How much are we talking about? Exactly 935,000 euros. Our contacts, the email concludes, arrived thanks to a report on Graziella’s professional blog. Let’s try to answer. We expect another message already filled out and instead we find someone who this time It seems to really exist.
How the fake donation scam works
There is no Graziella Modron no trace on the web. This obviously doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Or almost. The only reference you can find online about her is on a French obituary site. It says here that Graziella Modron died in July 2022, a 80 years old. In any case, our Graziella continues to write to us. He tells us that he would like to know something more about us and our history donate his assets.
From here begins a fairly intense flow of emails. We make up a story, we explain that with that money we will send our children to university. Graziella asks us only one thing: “What I want from you is to donate 40% of the funds to an orphanage and keep the rest for you and your family”. We accept, of course. And she accepts, just as obviously. In the last long email he tells us that we will soon be contacted by his lawyer: tal Maître Guy Alves.
The identity of the lawyer: who is Maître Guy Alves
This is where things get interesting. Searching Maître Guy Alves on Facebook we found at least two false pages. The first is that of a self-styled notary firm Guy Alves. Just a handful of posts. There are two interesting things. The first is the photo: as the cover image there is a shot that portrays Guy Alves, co-founder of the Bygmalion studio. This Bygmalion is a public relations agency involved in the Bygmalion Affair, a story of public funds used for the French presidential elections which led to the conviction of the former president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Another profile, however, is titled precisely Maître Guy Alves. Maître in French is a name used for figures such as lawyers and notaries. Here the photo chosen is less refined. Our Maître Guy Alves has the same features as Eric Dupond-MorettiMinister of Justice in France from 2020 to 2024. In the case we were honored to have spoken with him.
Lawyer requests for our personal data
At this point the lawyer writes to us directly. He also asks us for some basic information and then wants to have our identity document to proceed with the donation. Let’s stop responding. He insists and then disappears. In the end he returns to the charge.
In the last email he writes: “With this email I inform you of the sad news of the death of Mrs. Graziella Mondon which occurred last night at 3:08. Furthermore, it appears from his will that you are his legitimate heir. We are waiting to hear from you to inform you of the instructions to follow to receive funds safely.” Of course, of course. We don’t know how the scam would have ended, but let’s take a gamble. Lawyer Guy Alves’ next move would have been to ask us for money to unblock the inheritance.
