Virus (worm?) that uses abandoned e-mail accounts?

I was curious about a virus I (almost) encountered awhile back. I was sent an e-mail with a subject somewhere along the lines of, "I send you this in exchange for your advice." It also had an attachment (I've forgotten the file name, since it's been at least 6 months...). I asked a couple of friends if they were familiar with the e-mail address. I found out it used to belong to one of them, and that he had quit using it a long time ago. He had gotten an e-mail from the same address, and his computer got messed up. So to wrap things up, anyone know of a virus that uses old e-mail accounts to distribute itself? One more thing, the e-mail address was a hotmail address, and I'm not really sure if people use Microsoft Outlook in the UK... :D

~Knightess :halo: