A few months ago an old mate who is well known in our part of the UK had his email hacked.

All his contacts were then sent a variation on this email.

The sob story in this instance was that he had been mugged in Spain
and had everything, cash/credit-cards/passport/etc stolen,
thus desperately needed loadsamoney mailed immediately so he could pay off all travel bills and come home.

He quickly set up a new email to alert us all as soon as he discovered the hack,
but sadly some good kind friends were taken in by the fraudster and conned out of a fair few quid.

The common link seems to be originating from Spain.