Dearest One,
My name is Mrs. Susan Schultz, I am 69 years old and I was diagnosed for cancer for about 2 years ago, i am a dying woman and I have decided to donate the sum of $6.4 million dollars to you in the hope that you will use it for charity.
Contact my lawyer with this email, he will explain better to you:
Name: Peter Crumley
Email: petercrumly2001@aol.com
Tell him that I have WILLED $6.4M to you by quoting my personal reference number NOMA/ekl/1024/1.618. I have also notified him that I am WILLING that amount to you for charity and a nominated cancer foundation of your choosing.
Please use the funds judiciously.
Thanks and remain blessed.
Regards,
Mrs. Susan Schultz
In the words of Ralph Kramden: I'm rich! Thank you, Mrs. Schultz!
16 comments:
You know, using Gmail, I don't see much spam. So it's amusing when one slips through.
You know, given how infamous this kind of spamming has become, it's amazing to me that spammers are still trying to hook people with stuff like this. I don't know anyone who's still "Internet naive" enough to fall for one of these.
OTOH, I suppose the spammers wouldn't continue to do this crap if someone somewhere wasn't responding; more's the pity... :/
Dear L-Girl,
I represent the charity "Sassy's Retirement Fund". blah, blah, blah....
Please use the enclosed pre-paid postage envelope to make your donation of $6.4 million.
In my Rogers/Yahoo account I have been spamming myself for the last couple of years now!!
It is very surreal to receive spam from one's own account. Normally I find them filtered to the spam folder but just this week I received one (from ME) in the inbox! I am getting much more clever it seems.
I have the same reference number!
Amid all of the world's current crises, isn't it nice when complete strangers contact you out of the blue and want to give you millions of dollars? And the nicest thing is that it happens so often.
John Ardelli, I always think the same thing. Who would fall for this? Could anyone possibly think this is legit?
But then, if no one ever fell for it, would they continue to send it...?? (Whoever "they" are.)
I also enjoy seeing the typos, bad grammar and misplaced punctuation.
My name is Mrs. Susan Schultz, I am 69 years old and I was diagnosed for cancer for about 2 years ago, i am a dying woman
These comments are very funny. :)
I was diagnosed for cancer
It's like winning the lottery -- in reverse!
Check out "How To Trick an Online Scammer Into Carving a Computer Out of Wood" by Ron Rosenbaum in the June 2007 issue of The Atlantic.
***
A vicious and intriguing cyber-war has broken out in the Spamosphere, or more specifically in what I’d call the “Scamosphere.”
I’m speaking of the emergence of “scam-baiters,” the avengers of the Scamosphere, who’ve arisen to take on “419” con artists, the scammers who pose in spam e-mails as agents for the widows of deposed finance ministers of Dubai or vice chairmen of the Ivory Coast Cocoa Trading Board. ...
Scam-baiters have set out to reverse this dynamic, to turn the tables on the scammers. The legions of scam-baiters seek to con the con artists, often with remarkable artistry of their own. They tease the scammers with promises of payments that don’t arrive, with wired funds from banks that don’t exist, with Western Union money transfers that go awry. They lead the scammers on wild-goose chases to pick up checks from couriers who don’t materialize, insist the scammers perform ridiculous stunts, and ask them to pose with demeaning signs to prove their commitment to the transaction. Blinded by the same greed that blinds their marks, the scammers take the scam- baiters’ bait and, often as not, end up as heads on the virtual wall in the scam-baiting Web sites’ “trophy rooms.” ..........
Name: Peter Crumley
Email: petercrumly2001@aol.com
Did he misspell his "name" in his email address?
Also, the "lawyer" has an AOL address? It's sad, really -- they're not even trying.
Though I do hope you send him an email.
Even if you got only the .4 part of the millions, that would be good.
Ron Rosenbaum, yay! Haven't read anything of his in ages, but I really really like his stuff.
Also, the "lawyer" has an AOL address? It's sad, really -- they're not even trying.
And how many people would believe that a will works this way - you receive an email from a stranger, then reply to an email address.
Even if you got only the .4 part of the millions, that would be good.
Indeed.
At one time I fantasized about hooking up the tragically orphaned West African heiresses and the Coalition servicemen who had stumbled upon Saddam's hoard of U.S. cash in a barrel in the desert with the Thai entrepreneurs who left umpteen offers of fabulous deals on porn, cigarettes and solid-wood furniture (??) on a (previously unsecured) guestbook at an academic research website I manage (about Iberian dialectology). They seem like business partners made in cyber-heaven -- but I just never had the energy.
I was gratified last summer when I listened (on CBC's "Outfront") to someone in B.C. who actually took the trouble to string along a spammer/scammer who was trying to perpetrate the (apparently, notorious) "accidental over-payment-repayment" scam. Even though the police confirmed that this was a well-known scam that is/was all-too-regularly successful, and the scam-baiter actually managed to keep the scammer squirming for weeks, the police had effectively no interest in actually pursuing the cons (which would have entailed international cooperation between jurisdictions, etc.).
My gmail isn't too bad (just the occasional Burkino Faso banking official) but the @yahoo.ca address for londonresisters gets an annoying amounts of spam -- both financial schemes and fairly weird conspiracy stuff (even after the identical message has been repeatedly flagged as spam). Since I am always hopeful about donations, I actually open far too many of them... sigh.
Gmail is the best for catching spam, by far.
On the grammar/spelling issue, is it just me or is grammar and spelling getting worse online?
When I first got online around 1995 at my local library, I found that most people I met knew how to write. Oh, I'm not saying that everyone I encountered could analyze the collected works of Shakespeare but most people seemed to have a firm grasp of the basic mechanics of writing (spelling, punctuation, etc.).
Nowadays, however, I'm encountering more and more people who don't have clue one how to properly construct a sentence; some don't even seem to have the most basic knowledge like the fact that you capitalize the first word in a sentence. Heck, some don't even seem to know how and when to use punctuation at all; I've encountered more than one person who just writes everything in lowercase, all running together (or, worse, in ALL CAPS).
Not all of these are kids, either; I've encountered more than one full grown adult who commits such atrocities on the English language. At first, I always used to assume these were just people for whom English wasn't a first language; later, I was dismayed to discover that, for many of these people, English was their only language.
When I was going to school, I wouldn't have made it out of Junior High, much less High School, writing like that; it makes me wonder what's being taught in modern "English" classes these days...
OTOH, this disintegration of English education has occasional advantages; I was able to identify a troll on my blog on the basis of unique grammar and spelling errors they consistently make in every posting. This also helped me figure out that this threatening comment, made to another blog, was also from them which, in turn, provided me with enough evidence to go to the police with the threat; the incident is being investigated now.
The funniest thing, however, is that this person tried to impersonate someone I know who holds a degree in linguistics; the obvious grammar and spelling problems made it as obvious as an aluminum bat to the groin that they weren't who they said they were. ;)
This is, BTW, the same troll you saw referenced on my blog before. I've made considerable progress in identifying them and look forward to the day when I can actually press charges; I don't react well to threats.
I know you have a well earned disdain for trolls. If you're interested in eventually seeing one dead troll in a baggie, stay tuned to my blog for updates. ;)
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