Fake government grant / unclaimed benefit scam — federal grant/stimulus/COVID relief approved + pay processing/administrative fee to release funds
fake-grant-government-benefit-claim-scam
What this tier means
High-confidence threat indicator — phishing, impersonation, BEC, or scam pattern. Strong contributor to the trash decision.
How Gorganizer detects this
Email claiming the recipient has been approved for a federal grant, unclaimed COVID-19 relief benefit, stimulus check, SNAP benefit refund, or other government award — but requiring payment of a "processing fee," "administrative fee," "bank fee," or "notarization fee" ($75–$250+) before the funds can be released. No legitimate government benefit or grant requires an upfront payment to claim. Real stimulus payments came via IRS direct deposit or check without any fee. FTC 2024: government benefit impersonation and fake grant scams caused $492M in losses; the "unclaimed funds" pretext spikes after real stimulus programs (COVID, emergency relief) to exploit public familiarity. The fee is the scam — no funds exist.
False-positive guard
Every signal in Gorganizer feeds a multi-module score — never a sole verdict. This is a threat-tier signal — it adds a strong contribution to the trash score. The full pipeline still requires convergence across multiple modules + a margin over the safety floor before deletion happens, and Gmail's trash (30-day recovery) is always used — never permanent delete.
About the scoring engine
Gorganizer's scoring engine emits over 1,800 signals across six modules — headers, sender, subject, body, attachments, and structural metadata. Every email is scored by every module independently; the final verdict requires multiple modules to agree and the trash score to beat the safety floor by a margin.
Sacred safety guards — never delete starred emails, replies, calendar invites, receipts/invoices, or attachments — apply unconditionally regardless of any signal.
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