I just got a Nigerian e-mail

So, I'm checkin' e-mail one last time before signing off, and there it is....The Honorable Ms. Linda Finnimore, needing some help in dealing with her husband's sizeable inheritance. Trying to scam some poor soul out of their life savings. :grr:

:banghead:

Why can't people just get an effin' job?!!!

inheritance.

Okay, next question...

They don't have the experience for anything else.

Send them long-rambling e-mails in reply, telling them how much you sympathize with them and telling them your whole (fictionalized) life story. Never EVER get to the point.

It's fun.

And, believe it or not, I have gotten replies.

Dear Sir,

Thank you very much for writing to me. I am Conchita and I am so poor that I have no last name, as my father could not afford one for me. We live on a small island in the South Pacific and are the only family that has lived here for the past one hundred years.

Unfortunately, we have eaten almost everything on the island except for the dirt and two skinny dogs that are too old to scratch fleas. Fortunately, we ate all the fleas so there are none left for the dogs to worry about.

I am so pleased that you have offered to send us all that money. We have not seen money for the last three generations as we have no place to spend it and no means of getting to a place where we could spend it if we wanted to. I can assure you that we will take excellent care of your funds and invest them wisely. Our plan for the money is as follows:

1. We want to build a deep-water port in Williwilli, our little lagoon here on the island.

2. We then want to bring in a barge with an electrical generator so that we can have electricity on the island once again. We haven't had electricity in over two hundred years because the last generator broke down and we have no parts to repair it.

3. We want to build a school here so the children can learn to read and write. It is really hard to create email messages with no electricity and no knowledge of reading or writing skills.

4. We then want to install a phone company so we can communicate with the outside world and meet more wonderful people like you and your blessed family.

5. We then want to build a satellite cable system so we can watch television and see all the latest fights in the world. We don't have those here and miss them very much. We think that we could probably hook up a computer to the cable or telephone lines so we could send email messages to our newfound friends when we get them.

6. We want to build a grocery store so we have a place to buy things like bubble gum and candy, something we have never had here.

7. We will then need to build a road from our cave to the grocery store so we can get there. Of course, we will need a car to drive on the road or there will be no point in having a road, will there?

8. If we get a car we will need gas and oil but maybe we could just take some from the electrical generator and save that money for a beauty salon, something we really need here. Have you seen the women around here? They are just awful looking.

9. Of course, we will have to build a church so we have a place to go and be thankful for the gifts you have offered us.

Once all these things have been completed, if there is any money left we would like to use it to build a house to live in. The hole we use for an outhouse is rapidly filling up since we began receiving your letters of appeal and we will need to move soon as the cave will be unbearable to live in during hot weather. Air conditioning in our new house would be nice too.

It is too bad that I am only eight years old. If I were older I could come and visit you if you sent me an airplane ticket and an airplane with pontoons on it so it could land in the lagoon. One of my grandchildren would like to come and visit you also, if you don't mind.

I shall patiently await the arrival of the next bottle with your message telling us when the money will be here. Thank you again, for your kind generosity; it is sincerely appreciated.


Conchita

One of my little projects is to save the e-mail addresses where these come from, then concoct my own Americanized version of their idiotoc story and send it right back to them (and maybe do it every day for a month or so).

while we were dealing with my debit card stuff, said she's amazed at how many people fall for the Nigerian scam. Told me about someone who believed an e-mail she got, telling her that the Rockefellers were her long, lost cousins, that one had died, and they needed to put her $30 million inheritance into her bank account. She fell for it, and was completely wiped out.

And my dad says genealogical work is a silly waste of time!! I know for a fact that all my ancestors were nothing and nobody, with not a red cent to drop in my bank account! I won't be fooled.

Why Nigeria? It's as if there are no other countries that are capable of playing on our sympathies. If they want to really be convincing they should claim they are from somewhere else.

This scam has been around so long that I am constantly surprised people continue to fall for it.

but if you check the e-mail headers, you will see that most of these scam letters originated in Nigeria.