Tim Balough is not stranded in London. Or anywhere else.

I got a call this morning from Greg Miller, a BMW riding friend in Indiana, who said he received an email from Colorado friend Tim Balough who is presumably stranded in London after being robbed of his cash and his cell phone.

Tim supposedly had to make a quick trip to the U.K. which, if you know Tim, is completely off the probability scale. Getting no answer on Tim’s cell phone, Greg called Tim’s wife Linda, who said Tim is pulling a 24-hour shift at the Alma, Colo. fire station where he is a volunteer fire fighter.

It appears that malware has gotten into Tim’s Gmail account and is sending bogus emails to random contacts in his address book. I didn’t get one, but I’m grateful for the heads up, even though I would have been immediately suspicious too.

This is a fairly common scam. The scammers usually target the elderly, pretending to be a grandchild who has been the victim of a crime or is falsely imprisoned in a foreign country, requesting that money be wired to help them out.