You know the letters that start off like this:
Naturally, this letter will come to you as a surprise since
we have not met, permit me however to introduce myself; I
am Paul Rhodes, a white Zimbabwean Farmer, currently in
hiding in Zimbabwe.
Or it’s some variation thereof in which they go on to say how they need your help in getting money into the country?
So how long before we start seeing them that begin with, “I am (fill in name), and my entire family’s assets were wiped out by the tsunami in Indonesia…except for $15 million in a Swiss bank account…”
PAD
• 
Let the egg timer go “ding!”
Got one in my junk mail folder just yesterday. Naturally, I deleted it in disgust.
The weirdest variation on the Nigerian letter I’ve seen is a reworking that was from Suha Arafat.
I’ve received several messages of this type now; I routinely report them as spam.
My sympathies go out to friends and family of Will Eisner (as well as to those of Kelly Freas). As others have said (and combined with the increasing death toll in the wake of the tsunami), what a horrible way to start the new year.
There’s an entire website devoted to playing with these people, stringing them along with the hope that you are actually dumb enough to send them money if they just do “one more thing” over and over again. One guy got the crook to send photos holding a sign with the secret message “I shag sheep”, among other humiliations.
Of course, making fools out of conmen has potential risks but I wish that more people who otherwise troll the webb would take up this hobby as an outlet for their aggressions.
Continued interaction with these slugs also runs the risk that they will somehow get enough information about you to take advantage of you in some way. This in addition to the very fact that you replied will confirm that your email address is valid and, generally, open up the floodgates to a deluge of junk.
http://www.419eater.com/
Great site!
Nalo Hopkinson reports getting one on January 3.
The thing is people are dumb enough to do it. A few months ago the BBC did a report on that type of Scam coming from Africa being one of the biggest ones that people fall for. Really sad. It all goes back to the basic phrase. ” you don’t get nothin’ for free”
” you don’t get nothin’ for free”
Wow, hope all those people waiting for relief and aid after the tsunami don’t find that to be true. I’ve seen so many “agencies” and “”people” claiming to colloect money for them…
Forget the spam.
I’m just waiting for someone to blame the evil Jeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwws.
You know its coming.
I heard that some people are blaming America for it. Supposedly, they claim America is testing nukes, and caused an earthquake. oddly enough, this is the same way Godzilla woke up, and millions were made from the movies. (uh oh, you know we’ll see a tsunami movie soon)
oh, and this came from a pro-war, anti-Iraqi people person I know, so, I don’t fully trust it, but I decided to mention it, but say it may be false, because I don’t want what happened with the NF cancellation rumors to happen with this.
Since the egg timer has already gone off, how about we reset it. “How long until Dubya declares a ‘War on Tsunamis’?”
I’ve heard similar things, Darrik — I gave it about as much credence as I do claims that we faked the Apollo moon landings.
Amazing what some people will do.
TWL
I’ve said it many times. The only way to stop spam is not government action, or simple things like this. It will require someone who has a lot of money, good defense lawyers, the ability to find the spammer’s home address, and some associates armed with crowbars and baseball bats.
I worked with someone not as clever as this, in the time before the Internet and home computers were popular, who was a con man. I worked for him, and I was taken only slightly less often than the people he scammed. He was smug, self-satisfied, and basically sociopathic; he cared only for himself and his self-satisfaction, even if it was short-sighted. He’s either dead or in jail now – which, I don’t care – and that’s the only way he could have been stopped.
Bladstar:
>>” you don’t get nothin’ for free”
>Wow, hope all those people waiting for relief and aid after the tsunami don’t find that to be true. I’ve seen so many “agencies” and “”people” claiming to colloect money for them…
It is only semantics here, but I doubt that anyone surviving that experience are seeing this support as being “for free”. The cost that they’ve already paid is immeasurable.
Fred
The point it, the phrase usually refers to earning something. Just being a victim of nature isn’t EARNING anything….
And who did they “pay” for this help?
Don’t kid yourself, unless America really did cause this tsunami…
Bladestar, huh?
Are you suggesting that the tsunami victims are in some way not deserving of support at this time? That they should just be left to fend for their own, on their own, without any aid beyond that which they can generate themselves?
I think you can reasonably interpret the phrase “you don’t get anything for free” as meaning that nothing comes without a cost. Whether you’ve “earned” something or not in an entirely different matter. Anything you acquire comes at some expense somewhere. Whether that’s the toil of labor or the deaths of tens of thousands, there’s still a cost borne.
I got my first post-tsunami spam last Wednesday.
—KRAD
OK, I was going to call “end of the week,” but apparently the forces of evil are even more opportunistic than I thought. Also, more evil.
What?!? You mean that e-mail wasn’t just sent to me?!?
Drat!
Hah! I got you all beat. I won 10 million dollars in a contest overseas that I never even entered. Am I lucky or what? And all I need to do is send them $350 dollars so they can set up an account in my name!
Bladstar:
>The point it, the phrase usually refers to earning something. Just being a victim of nature isn’t EARNING anything….
I didn’t say that they earned any help. I stated that they have paid a horrific price. Hence….. they are not getting anything for free. Nobody over there who have lost family and all possessions will ever come close to being made whole by the monies donated. They will survive perhaps, but nothing more.
I’m waiting for Bush to use the tsunami as an excuse to start drilling in Alaska. “Mother nature has proved herself to be a deadly emeny of the human race. We must hunt her down and destroy her before she can strike again.”
PS. How lucky is Bush? At the start of his first term he had 9-11 to distract people from the bad job he was doing as president, and now at the start of his second term he has the tsunami to distract people from the bad job he’s doing in the war on terror.
ATTN: THE PRESIDENT/CEO
Dear Sir / Madam,
I am Mr. Bib Fortuna, secretary to the late Desilijic family boss,Jabba the Hutt who died on Tatooine while still on active duty for our family.
When my boss was alive I used to move funds running into millions of Galactic Credits to Nar Shaddaa and Ord Mantell. However, on the eve of my boss’s death in Tatooine, he gave me the sum of 24m(million) Galactic Credits in cash to move to Nar Shaddaa as usual, but immediately my boss died I moved the funds to CORUSCANT through a diplomatic courier service to a security company on CORUSCANT. The funds have been in the security company on CORUSCANT.
Because of the restriction placed on my family by the New Republic Government, I Simply cannot travel to secure the funds from the security company on CORUSCANT.
What I now need from you are as follows:
(1) You should travel to CORUSCANT to secure the funds in cash on my behalf and deposit it in your bank account on your planet.
(2) You will be entitled to 10% of the total sum involved for your assistance.
(3) As soon as you confirm to me by holo transmission your readiness to travel to CORUSCANT, I will fax a copy of my Power of Attorney to the security company on CORUSCANT authorizing them to release the funds to you.
(4) As soon as you have the funds in your custody, I will give you my account details on Kessell where you will transfer my funds to on my behalf.
Your URGENT response is needed. All correspondence must be through my lawyer,holo:392-3492-342488-234. Attentioned to my attorney (SALACIOUS B. CRUMB). Please do not forget to include your direct holo line for easy reach.
I hope I can trust you with my family’s last financial hope.
Best regards,
MR. BIB FORTUNA
Worse than trying to con people out of their money, some scum are trying to traffic the children orphaned by this. Someone mentioned evil up thread. I think we’re really seeing it now.
Reading comprehension is lost on you people…
I was pointing out that that phrase means disaster victims should get squat according to those who live by the ” you don’t get nothin’ for free” creed…
But as usual, you only see what you want to see, typical…
2nd of all, they didn’t EARN or PAY for anything from AMerica (again, unless America is somehow responsible for the deaths)
America didn’t benefit from the deaths, so they didn’t earn or pay the price to get all this aid from us. So according to the “can’t get something for nothing crowd”, they shoouldn’t be getting anything. Mother Nature owes them…not the US if you want to get technical about who they “paid” with their lives…
Blade, either you’re trying to stretch a point for satirical reasons (in which case I think it snapped on you), or you are the one lacking comprehension.
“Something for nothing” would be holding charity events to scrape together funding to buy school supplies and backpacks for those poor unemployed kids in Beverly Hills. That would be a group that has not “paid their dues”, as it were, in any meaningful fashion.
The tsunami victims had the double whammy of living in a part of the world mired in poverty (and no, we won’t go into any background reasons for that – too much potential for acrimony there) and having what little they did possess, including, in over a hundred thousand instances, their lives, swept away by a vast wall of water. They’ve paid for anything we do for them – in blood. Now, it’s up to us to fulfill that blood price. (This is in no way a “natural mandate” – their is nothing forcing us to behave so, except the sense of decency trained into us by our culture.)
Perhaps you’d be more comfortable with the concept of TANSTAAFL. It’s not a “free lunch”; it cost lives. The monetary cost is being borne by the Western world, because we’re the ones with the money.
Jonathon:
>(This is in no way a “natural mandate” – their is nothing forcing us to behave so, except the sense of decency trained into us by our culture.)
Jonathon, after reading your post, I’d add that the U.S. does owe it to these people. As a nation whose government has conitually preached to the world of our concern for them, this is a moment for us to put up or shut up. The U.S. government does owe this to these people in some ways as it is paying the debt/price that comes with rhetoric.
Fred
I should add that I have been happy to see the dollar amount donated by private citizens around the country growing at an impressive rate. This is heart-warming in a situation that has been so heart-breaking.
Again, YOU lack the reading comprehension, Johnathon…
IF IF IF IF IF IF IF (Does the word IF register for you?) you subscribe to the “nothing is free” creed, like so many here claim, then neither the Tsunami victims, or any other charities should get any money.
Just being a victim is not earning anything. By that definition, every rape victim, everyu abuse victim, and every robbery victim is owed millions by the government and the american people.
The lives lost to a disaster are not “payment” ot “earnings” for anything, they are simply horrible accidents, but no one is “owed” anything.
Helping them is the HUMAN thing to do, but it is not the “nothing in life is free” thing.
Second of all, America doesn’t “owe” these people anything just for being the “wealthiest nation”. Take a look at the national debt, the trade deficit, the erosion of the job base, and the individual debt levels of America and you’ll see a startling picture of a house of cards built on quicksand that is consuming itself like it has cancer…
Take care of the america sick, poor, and unemployed before you waste millions and billions WE DON’T EVEN HAVE on foreign nations anywhere…
America doesn’t “Owe” any one just becaise america was ONCE a great, wealthy country (that is now in a sharp decline)…
Whether the US owes anyone anything at all really isn’t the point.
What is clear, however, is that Bladestar is stuck on the idea that the so-called something for nothing crowd must adhere to his understanding that things you get must be *earned*, rather than *paid for*, and that, since the tsunami victims didn’t toil and labor their way into catastrophic death and destruction, they haven’t earned the assistance the world over appears to be willing to grant them, and thus, are indeed getting something for free.
……
Sheeya…whatever…
Bobb misses the point (as is usual) (of course, royalty is famous for debilitating inbreeding)
They didn’t pay the US anything, so how do they deserve anything for it? If anybody owes them, it’s “Mother Nature”. Or perhaps, for the more religiously minded, their god owes them…
“Forget the spam.
I’m just waiting for someone to blame the evil Jeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwws.
You know its coming.”
I heard every Israeli in the area got out 24 hours in advance because they had inside information from God and didn’t want to share it.
Ðámņ you, Chosen People!
PAD
So are we all Indonesians now?
(if 9/11/01 made us all New Yorkers, it’s a fair question.)
I can see the hair Bladestar is splitting. It’s whether we owe things to others because they’ve worked for ’em, or because of basic expectations of how human beings treat each other.
I don’t begrudge dollars (tax or charitable) going for disaster relief, whether the disaster is domestic or foreign, a matter of storm or earthquake, disease or famine, or simple economic collapse.
On the other hand, panhandlers on the street raise my hackles because I think “I’ve worked hard for things I didn’t get at the end. I’m not handing money to a stranger just because he asks.”
And of course, we’ve all experienced working hard for something we didn’t get — money, prestige, affection, etc. And we’ve all had things happen to us we didn’t deserve. So do we go around feeling entitled, or generous, or something in-between?
I got the following fake charity solicitation on December 29th:
David,
Did it actually have you email address?
I’ve not gotten that particular junk-mail but I’ve seen a few that don’t even have my actual e-mail adress under to, cc, or bcc….
My brother is a Secret Service agent, and the stories he tells about spam frauds, and eBay frauds, are truly frightening. It seems incredible to me that people can send others thousands and thousands of dollars, under the most dubious of merits; and yet it happens all the time, because these things would die out if they never worked.
There are plenty of organizations working to help the victims of this disaster, and they all have official websites. (Heck, some of the websites are given on the news.) If you want to donate, go to those sites and donate.
And, to politicise this, Bush is incredibly lucky. Dozens of Iraquis (mainly policemen) have been killed in the past weeks, there’s talk about delaying the election (which Bush said wouldn’t happen), and all the news coverage is on the earhtquake and tsunamis. When they get around to Iraq again, it’ll be a rude awakening.
And people thought Clinton was the luckiest president…
Have the conspiracy theorists surfaced yet? The one’s where the US set off an underwater nuke to cause the tidalwave in an effort to distract the public from Iraq?
Kingbobb:
Don’t believe the story about the shifting tectonic plates that have been shifting for centuries. That’s an obvious Bush administration lie. It was caused by global warming which melted most of the polar icecaps. The extra pounds per square inch on the ocean floor was too much for the earth to handle and that’s what caused the earthquake, which set off the tidal wave. Israel and the United States then directed the tsunami towards the Muslim countries then witheld warning those countries, which is why Israel was disinvited to contribute aid.
I KNEW it!
Here I was thinking it was a US sub-launched underwater nuke of some kind, and the results were just bigger than expected.
But of course, now it all makes sense…
Have the conspiracy theorists surfaced yet? The one’s where the US set off an underwater nuke to cause the tidalwave in an effort to distract the public from Iraq?
Actually, just this morning on another forum I read, somebody posted an article from an Egyptian magazine or newspaper that said that the tsunami was caused by Indian nuclear testing, with support of the Israeli and US governments.
I don’t know about you guys, but I think some writers over there needs a brain scan done.
The sad thing is, with our current administration,you just can’t tell for sure.
For months now, and especially in the last few weeks, there have been an unusually high number of whale and other cetacean beachings down near that area. Testing of US super-secret weapon? Could be…
Or more likely, just nature taking its course. If the beachings are related, could just be from ultrasonic emissions from the plates about to shift interfering with the whales’ sonar.
For months now, and especially in the last few weeks, there have been an unusually high number of whale and other cetacean beachings down near that area. Testing of US super-secret weapon? Could be…
Or more likely, just nature taking its course. If the beachings are related, could just be from ultrasonic emissions from the plates about to shift interfering with the whales’ sonar.
No.no. no! That what they want you to think. Even though whales have been beaching themselves for centuries, somehow, it’s all Bush’s fault.
I can prove it. Look, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, all red states, are having gorgeous weather. 60 and 70 degree weather, and sunny skies. But look out west to California and Oregon, both blue states, both having terrible weather.
Hey, Ohio’s the one that’s about to get hit with a massive weather pattern this weekend. I think there’s a strong argument to be made for karmic retribution there. 🙂
TWL
Ohio caused a controversy. This’ll teach them to do as they’re told next time or they’ll get what Florida got this past summer.
“For months now, and especially in the last few weeks, there have been an unusually high number of whale and other cetacean beachings down near that area. Testing of US super-secret weapon? Could be…
Or more likely, just nature taking its course. If the beachings are related, could just be from ultrasonic emissions from the plates about to shift interfering with the whales’ sonar.”
For what it’s worth, a blue whale carcass just washed up on one of the affected beaches: http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11885217%255E1702,00.html
Looks like we have a comment spammer. I just read in another blog that trackback spammers are becoming a problem, too. Every day they come up with a new way to annoy us. Who are these idiots that are buying things from them? They must be selling something or these tactics would be in the trash bin of history.
Speaking of playing with spammers….
I remember one instance where someone got one of the money laundering spams, and replied to the individual, playing out a long and convoluted correspondence that became more and more laced with references with Arham and Miskatonic University, growing more and more ominous as he told the spammer of the evil closing in around him, strange people with odd, batrachian features who followed a god name Cthulu. Then his correspondence ended. Afterward, he had friends of his send unsolicited e-mails to the spammer inquiring about the missing correspondent and about the contents of his e-mails. The spammer hysterically answered that he never heard of the man, never corresponded with him and to never write to him again.
I always wondered if that spammer went into another line of work.
Chuck