I just five minutes ago got an e-mail from my friend’s address with one of those things where she tells me she was mugged in London and wants me to wire her $2000.
Dear sir and/or madame,
Salutations, I am GRIMHELM WORMTONGUE, The son of late Counsellor
Grima Wormtongue of the Kingdom of Rohan.
My father was Chief Counsellor [equivalent to Prime Minister] to late
lamented king Theoden of Rohan. In his position my father altogether
legally and correctly acquired significant assets throughout Rohan in
order to protect the Kingdom from enemy forces within and without.
In the course of lamentable events succeeding, my father was illegally
deprived of office and expelled from the Kingdom. Before this he had
with foresight already entirely legally deposited the sum of
M.500,000,000, 000 in gold with the Bank of Gondor (Minas Tirith).
While in exile in the north he was assaulted and murdered by a band of
northern pigmies. His family was obliged to seek refuge in northern
Dunland among some of our sympathisers.
My father left to me all documents necessary to retrieve the sum of
gold aforesaid from the Bank of Gondor (Minas Tirith). However, in the
current political circumstances my solicitor believes it unwise for me
to attempt to make the trip from Dunland to Minas Tirith, and has
recommended that I seek a trustworthy foreign business partner into
whose account this money could be tranferred. This appears to be the
best option as we are unable to open an account in Dunland. Therefore
we are seeking your trustworthy assistance and cooperation.
You will provide information about your account that will enable a
deposit to be made in your name. I will contact the Bank of Gondor
(Minas Tirith) and inform them that the money is to be placed into
your account. Upon completion of the transaction your share of the
proceeds will be 15% net following deduction of all transfer fees,
that is M. 75,000,000,000. If the transaction goes well we also look
forward to maintaining you as a profitable business partner for future
ventures.
It goes without saying that I can expect your complete confidence and
secrecy in keeping this matter under wraps prefatory to completion.
Please reach me at my email address: mbrandybuck@ buckland. net
Thank you and ERU bless.
MR. GRIMHELM WORMTONGUE.
I got a Liberian letter by fax at work yesterday from Charles Taylor Jnr.
Damn Cocoa Dealers…! Littering the streets with junkies desperate for their next fix!!! Do they even care how much pain they cause? Or how many familes they destroy…?
The moral issue I have is that if you are really going to fall for one of those, should you even be trusted with having anything more than 83 cents?
Heh. No.
Not only that but why do the scammers use such ridiculously large sums of money? 15% of 75 billion dollars? Really? They would probably get more people to bite if they used smaller amount and different ruses. Like unclaimed US bonds for $100 or something like that.
What are you waiting for? She’s desparate!
Send that message to these guys: http://www.scamorama.com/
Egads, I love that site. Just pick a thread and read it; it’s funnier than hell what they do to those bozos.
This reminds me of an old Tom Lehrer bit.
Please contact her immediately and tell her to change her email password-I can almost guarantee that everyone on her email contact list got the same message you did.
It is, but it’s also, I gather, not an improbable name for a Nigerian. After all their (president? prime minister?) is (was?) Goodluck Jonathan. Real birth name.
I think it might be a combination of “working the religious angle” (something tells me that the overly-religious fall for these easily, one of my wife’s friends who is the overly religious type does address all her emails to my wife that way) and either the way that Africans (many of whom are overly religious (by Dope standards)) address themselves, or how we perceive them to address themselves.
But then, I tend to overthink these things, making me a very bad candidate for the spams.
Sometimes scammers lift their “typical Western names” from previous victims. Scambaiters, therefore, will often use silly names- like Queen Gonzo. I once got a lad to refer to himself as Charles Manson (at least, I think he got it from me).
Just don’t contact her by emailing back. I had a nice chat with a scammer who had done the same to my Mother-in-law that abruptly ended when I called MIL’s cell phone.
Bravo! 
You know if scammers were really this creative I would let myself get scammed, for like $20, just for the entertainment value. Well done.
Estimable Czarcasm:
Sri = “Blessed”(No idea how common this salutation is in India)
Querido (salutation in a letter in Spanish) = “beloved”
-Yr. 'umble & obdt. servant,
Poly
I tried to call her, but her phone is turned off, presumably because she’s at work (and not because she’s in London having been mugged and using bad syntax (“its unbelievable me and my family are stuck here,got mugged at gun point on our way to the hotel and my money,credit cards,phone and other valuable things were taken off me at gun point, thanking Almighty God for save keeping my passport.,”). I knew I couldn’t e-mail her back, so I posted to her Facebook wall. It was the only thing I could think of. I don’t know the name of the company where she works, or I would have tried to call her there.
We got one of those yesterday as well.
Thank you.
Hell I got one from myself [I use 3 email accounts regularly, and have a gmail account that I had to have to do ghu knows what on my droid phone, it was on my gmail account going to my GMX account]
I of course sent myself the $2000 … [well actually I transferred it out of savings into my checking account to cover the monthly bills…]