Received this is my email today and a couple of thoughts occurred to me.
Greetings!
I have been waiting for you since to contact me for your Confirmable Bank Draft of $520.000.00 United States Dollars, but I did not hear from you since that time. Then I went and deposited the Draft with FEDEX COURIER SERVICE, West Africa, I travelled out of the country for a 3 Months Course and I will
not come back till end of September. What you have to do now is to contact the FEDEX COURIER SERVICE as soon as possible to know when they will deliver your package to you because of the expiring date. For your information, I have paid for the delivering Charge, Insurance premium and Clearance Certificate Fee of the Cheque showing that it is not a Drug Money or meant to sponsor Terrorist attack in your Country.
The only money you will send to the FEDEX COURIER SERVICE to deliver your Draft direct to your postal Address in your country is ($100.00 USD) only bein
Security Keeping Fee of the Courier Company so far.
Again, don’t be deceived by anybody to pay any other money except $100.00 US Dollars. I would
have paid that but they said no because they don’t know when you will contact them and in case of demurrage.You have to contact the FEDEX COURIER SERVICE
now for the delivery of your Draft with this information bellow;
Contact Person: Sir Ashton Williams
Email Address: mr.williams_fdxpost@post.com
Finally, make sure that you reconfirm your Postal address(………………) and Direct telephone number to them again to avoid any mistake on the Delivery Let me repeat again, try to contact them as soon as you receive this mail to avoid any further delay andremember to pay them their Security Keeping fee of $100.00 US Dollars for their immediate action.
You should also let me know through email as soon as you receive your Draft.
Yours Faithfully,
Mr. Dean Alex
So this is what bugs me about these emails.
I know that conmen work on the premise that a sucker is born every minute but I have to admit, the quality and attention to detail of these scams is pretty bad.
This one claims to be coming from an Englishman, a Knight is cited as the contact person, yet the grammatical errors contained in the text are appalling to say the least.
The use of the old chestnut ‘Fedex’ is always a give-away, especially as Fedex do not charge a security holding fee for those receiving money, the fee is upfront to those sending it.
Another alarm bell rings with the mention of West Africa, sort of a scammers paradise if we are to believe those who claim to be experts on such matters.
Now I get about 10 of these types of scams a week, everything from ‘Google Lotteries’, to people smuggling millions in gold out of war zones, blood diamonds to being told that I am the last living relative of some billionaire and that I am entitled to all their assets (odd as my mum and dad are still alive).
Finally, the biggest giveaway is the use of a yahoo email account. Nobody does that anymore, not businesses or lawyers, or millionaires. We use gmail now.
What really scares me is the media regularly reports that people are still suckered into these sorts of scams and loose small fortunes that seemingly can never be reclaimed (wonder if the banks lost money to scammers if the money trail would disappear so fast?).
So I had a little idea….
Why don’t we start giving the tax office of our host nation to the scammers as the contact so that they can try and mess with the most powerful organ in all western democracies, the tax collectors. If we give address details and the bank account number for the taxman with a contact phone number for the financial criminal division of the police, perhaps we might see a fall off on the number of these dodgy scams and heaven forbid, some of them might even end up getting caught. What use this will do I do not know as we do not seem to have any prisons available for criminals to reside in anymore.
Anyway, just thought I’d share, love these scammers and their hopeless attempts. Just reminds me that the world is a dangerous and predatory place, colourful and wonderful.
rocks in my shoe 
Trouble is Craig, is that it isn’t a hopeless attempt, rather a sure thing! It’s a numbers game, even if the ‘success’ rate is 0.0001%, when you are sending millions of emails and when that 0.0001% sucker is ‘willing’ to part with significant amounts of money…..
What upsets me is that often the ‘victim’ is just ignorant. I once got involved, (at the request of a Rwandan friend) with a guy who had become embroiled in a right mess after giving some money in response to an email purporting to be from an English ‘Lord’. Basically, this guy was so unsophisticated (Rwanda remember) and un-worldly wise that he simply couldn’t believe that the email wasn’t true. “How could a Lord act this way??” he would bleat. I could not make him understand that it was all pants.
His faith in the technology and the ‘printed’ word was absolute. So there you have it, a scumbag Nigerian taking the last dollars off a gullible, naive and ultimately greedy Rwandan. What a world eh!
Hope you are enjoying this weather! I just spent part of the last four days building a little ‘pram’ boat with my lad to play in down at Hvalstrand. One and a half sheets of plywood, a bunch of scrap offcuts from the shed and a bottle of waterproof glue later “The Mouse” is born. Will prob take the rest of the week to give it 4 or 5 coats of paint but next weekend….it’s sink or swim time! My lad is only 5, but I want get him started early!
Stay well Craig mate.