good call Doug.  Think I may have gotten it sorted out now.  A couple of filters were added to my account to send email to archive and spam.
Looks like all is fixed now. But then if someone sends you an email asking you to do them a favor (or favour) and get a gift card and email the back of the card with the silver scratched off ..

I hope no one falls for this thing.

The only reason I posted it here was my anticipation that the spammer/thief would intercept any email warnings I sent to John.

Of course I got one too. But I was too lazy to try to type an email so I just called John instead. Found he was in the middle of this already. 

I got the favour email also

( fyi... favour is UK spelling )

I got an email Jan 8 at 8:13 am Subject heading "Visit" and contents were "Good Morning. Happy New Year! Where are you at the moment? Please could you email me as soon as you receive this. I need your help with a quick favour.

Thank You,

John"

the spelling of favor / favour as well as the vagueness of the email tipped me off this wasn't worth looking at more. I then remembered seeing John in the topic heading on this site. Thanks for starting the thread and confirming that I did the right thing.

My dad got taken about 8 years or so ago and locked out of his own email with a similar scam.

Thank you Doug - I knew about it when my middle son (Andrew) called and said "What do you need" and told me about it.  If you responded they asked you to scratch off the silver on the back of the card and send them a picture of it.  I did send a email later this afternoon stating
"If you received an email from me this morning I did not send it.  It is a scam email sent asking you to go and buy a gift card and send them a picture of the back of the card.  Someone has hacked my contacts list"

Thanks for posting it here - hopefully no one will get taken in by it.

Yep, got the two emails also. Thought they didn't pass the smell test.

I got same email from another not on this board. Knowing the person I was not taken in and did give him a call. He was dealing with it. Steve (CTR)

Thanks for posting this Doug!
I got two emails from this "John" as well.  And the real John does have my email address but these emails were not written in John's style so I knew they had to be fake! 

John,

If you are not already aware of it, your email has been hacked.  I just got a scam email (2 actually) from a person professing to be you and asking that I buy gift cards for "your niece".  

My sister got hit by the same scam last year.

Doug L.