COLUMBIA – A new twist on an old scam is showing up in email boxes in South Carolina allegedly claiming to be sent by the US Postal Inspection Service in New York.

The United States Postal Service is keeping an eye on the scam that has been circulating for some time now, according to Harry Spratlin, U.S. Postal District Communications Coordinator-Greater S.C. District.

“We want to alert the public about the scam to make sure that people are careful to not provide personal information to a suspicious email such as this,” said Spratlin.

According to a recent report, the fraudulent email claims to be from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The message of the email claims to supposedly be from Chief Postal Inspector, William R. Galligan, notifies the recipient that a “parcel from DHL courier service has been stopped for security reasons” and “Our scanning system has detected that your parcel contains a confirmable ATM card to the tune of $1.5 million dollars.”

The email goes on to offer the email recipient to forward the parcel if the recipient will pay for an affidavit “from Spain” costing 89 Euros, and includes an email address to forward the payment.

“This scam is not new,” said Justin Crooks, PIO for the Charlotte Division of the U. S. Postal Inspection Service. “It’s a new take on the old ‘advance fee’ scam. However, it is unusual for scammers to use the Chief Postal Inspector’s name in order to sell a potential victim on playing along with their scam. None of the information in the email is factually correct, and, as usual, we warn folks not to open emails from an unknown source or to respond to any offer that is “too good to be true”.

A warning about it was posted on the U. S. Postal Inspection Service website: https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/radDocs/consumer/CrimeAlert20Gilliganemail.pdf.

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars. With 36,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, the Postal Service relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Named the (Most Trusted Government Agency) five consecutive years and the sixth (Most Trusted Business) in the nation by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $68 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank number 26 in the 2008 Fortune 500.