Jul 2009
9
Whenever you receive an email that urges you to immediately forward that mail to everyone you know, there is a very good chance the email is a hoax. Please take the time to verify the message by doing a Google search before you send it on to anyone else. In most cases when you take an arbitrary sentence from the message and google for it you'll end up with many hoax warning pages as the result.
The following email is one such hoax. There is a real scam that was the basis of this chain letter, but the amounts are much smaller and the scam is very rare. Phone calls to the 809 area code do not cost $2425 per call. According to AT&T, which calls the email an "Urban Legend" most calls to the 809 area code (which is the Dominican Republic, not the British Virgin Islands as claimed in the email) are charged at less than $4 per minute. You will not end up being charged thousands of dollars, even if you fall for the rare scam.
http://www.snopes.com/fraud/telephone/809.asp
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=6045
