The e-mail account I use for the SDMB (a Yahoo! account, for those curious about such things) has, for quite some time, been relatively ignored by spammers. I’d only get maybe one or two bulk e-mails a month. As of late, there have been a flood. The majority of these new junk e-mails have been the famed Nigerian scams, people promising large sums of money if only I will give them my bank account to launder their money out of Nigeria.
Now, my question (and maybe a quest) for my fellow Dopers, should we all have some collective fun with one of these? I know it’s been done before, there was one very fun thread about it a few months back. I think I need to lead one of these folks on myself, of course taking suggestions and such from Dopers. What say ye?
(I’ll come back as soon as I get another one of these e-mails. It’ll probably be in a few hours.)
I believe Scamorama is the leading resource for counter-scams. (I forget if it’s a .com or a .org; check on Google.) See if you can get something out of the would-be scammer!
Well, that didn’t take even as long as expected. Here goes:
From: Anderline & Rose Amarose_anderline11@yahoo.com
You may be a little dismayed on receipt of this mail because of its unusual contents especially from a total stranger. Nevertheless, I would plead that you take the pain to study the mail before you draw your conclusion. I’m Rose (16) and have an Elder sister Anderline (18). We are the children of Late Mr. & Mrs. John U.Ama. Our father was a very wealthy cocoa merchant here in Abidjan, the economic capital of Cote D’Ivoire. He was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outings on a business trip. Our mother died when we where babies.
Before the death of our father on Sept. 2004 in a private hospital here in Abidjan, he secretly called us by his bed side and told us that he has the sum of eight million two hundred thousand United State Dollars USD ($8.200,000) deposited in a suspense account in one of the big banks here in Abidjan. He told us that he used my sister’s name (Anderline) as the next of Kin in depositing the money.
He then strongly advised us not to seek for assistance in the investment of the money from his lawyer nor any of his friend here but to seek for a foreign partner from a country of our choice (outside our country, Cote D’Ivoire) that willl assist us in the wise investment of the money.We have since left the money in the bank with the view of our making use of it for investment purposes after our education carrier here.
For this ugly development in this country, we have now decided to take quick actions and have this money transferred out of this country before it is too late to do that. We now want to transfer it out and use it for investment purpose like real estate management or hotel management. Because of this we are honorably seeking your assistance in the following ways:
(1) To serve as a guardian to us and then assist us transfer the money into your bank account. (2) To make arrangement for us to come over to your country to further our education and then settle there parmanently.
If you accept to stand as our guardian or foster parent to us, we need not discuss on any percentage with you as you have to see the whole money as yours and then assist us invest it. But if you still want a percentage, we are willing to offer you, 20 % of the total money as compensation for your assistance. Pleas tell us if you feel the percentage we offered is not ok by you.
As soon as we receive your concrete assurance to assist us with our proposal and also your full contact address/phone number, we will then give the bank your contact information and then tell them to transfer the money into your account as we want to come over to stay with you parmanently. The bank will then contact you and communicate with you on the transfer.address removed @yahoo.com
Thanks and God bless you .
Best regards,
Okay, folks. How should I reply?
Oh, and just to add, I’m 19 and they’re asking me to be a foster parent. That is something I’d like to use.
Tell them you’re a member of the press, and you’ve published their letter in your city’s paper and now the entire town knows about them.
“please we beg you to keep this highly secret for our safety, as we believe that those that killed our Daddy are still after us.”
Tell them you know who killed their Daddy, that you have “connections”, and they’re next on your list, etc.
…I hate spam mail like this. :mad: