Truth in scamming

I’ve had the same basic email address for about 15 years now, and in my misspent youth, I was doing some fairly unsafe things with it (the Internet wasn’t evil then!). Upshot is, I get a **lot**  of spam. This past month, I got over 42,000 pieces of spam. Apple Mail does a fairly good job of figuring out what is spam and what isn’t, but some still gets through the cracks. My favourites are the Nigerian scam emails, mostly due to their laughably bad English and overall implausibility.

The one I’m about to share with you now, gentle reader, is particularly good – mostly due to its refreshingly blunt honesty. I won’t republish the entire thing, but here’s some good bits:

We are the Comptroller of Fund movement Terminal and Director of Statutory Department of Inter Banks Credit Commission. My Department is affiliated to FSA, UN, WORLD BANK, W.A.F.

Imagine this guy’s business card! How big would it have to be to fit all that on?

Fortunately, our Terminal in New York has been monitoring the routing of your fund for seizure’s became sympathetic to you for such attempt to carry on.

I’m glad there’s some terminal in New York that is sympathetic to seizures. Perhaps the Epilepsy Foundation ought to be notified?

For this reason, you must not inform anybody about this letter or my contact with you. You must keep my relationship with you to be topped secret and highly confidential.

Oops.

But here’s the best part – the only actually honest part of this whole email (emphasis mine):

Therefore, further details will be furnished to you and my identity will be forwarded to you as soon as I deceive your reply.

Freudian slip there, Mr Nigerian Scammer? Or a wave of subconscious guilt, forcing at least your fingers to do the right thing? We will never know.

Now if you’ll excuse me, gentle reader, I must go send my credit card number to this Russian doctor selling penis-enlargement pills from a 100% real Canadian pharmacy…