I got this email from a very close friend today, or so I thought:

How`s your day going? Hope everything`s alright. Please I need you to help me out with something. Can i get a loan from you very urgently? I`ll reimburse you under a week, i promise. I need to solve some personal problems at hand which have been giving me great worries. I`d also prefer if we discuss this issue through email as i am presently in England for a family friend`s funeral. I`m sorry if i didn`t inform you about it, but please try and understand. I`ll let you know how much i need if you are willing to assist. Thanks.
Barb.

A few phone calls confirmed she was fine, and not in England, but looks like someone hacked into her address book. These asshats will just never give up.:-)
[Reply]

Oddly coincidental, as I read this, I was listening to a German punk song titled "I lost my identity". There are methods of securing email along with anonymizing most other information traveling across the wire. It's definitely something to think about when any script kiddie with a torrent and a couple google skills can pull of something like email hi-jacking.
[Reply]

This has been going through facebook recently and has shown up in other venues as well.
[Reply]

I am glad that you didn't get played. These scam artist just keep getting bolder and bolder.
[Reply]

i Had one not long ago where they acctually IM'd me through facebook, live in real time. They were saying they were in london, just got mugged of all phone, id and credit cards and cash, and wanted me to wire them some money. Oddly enough I had just ate dinner with said friend about 2 hours earlier.

then another friend of ours had the same thing, except they were sending out emails to everyone about 3 weeks later. I guess my two friends had one heck of a party in the UK and forgot to invite me :-)
[Reply]

:-)

I have a friend on facebook who was posting links to videos that contained viruses. Someone hacked his username and password and sent the vids to all of his fb friends.:-)
[Reply]

The best thing to do is assume anything online is a scam. That way you'll never become a victim.

-edit- I realize that sounds somewhat jaded/sarcastic. What I ment was if someone you don't know 'talks' to you or sends you a personal message, it's most likely a scam.
[Reply]

Possible. But in this case the email suppossedly came from a close friend.:-)
[Reply]