Like everyone else, I receive more spam than genuine email (and as someone who seems to have subscribed to more sites than I’ve even visited, and as someone who has a lot of email contacts, I receive a substantial quantity of genuine emails). Usually I delete my spam immediately without opening it, but occasionally a title or sender’s address will look like it may be genuine or familiar, and on other occasions, the title is simply too bizarre to ignore.
For these reasons, and for the quite remarkable spamoetry some of the more imaginative missives that are created with the intention of persuading me to purchase some dodgy discount Viagra or other bogus treatment that will render my manhood thicker and longer than my forearm, I found myself enthralled by the art of spam, but also to wonder if anyone ever actually falls for these blatant scams.
Anyway, the rather innocuously-titled ‘From Thomas James’ was a mail I opened quite by accident. It read as follows:
Dear Friend ,
I am Thomas James., A Portuguese national,I was browsing and I saw your e-mail,
So i decided to write you if your e-mail is real, I have been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. It has defiled all forms of medical treatment, and right now I have only about a few months to live. I am very rich, but was never generous; I have given most of my assets to my immediate family members.
I have decided to give alms to charity organizations. I cannot do this myself anymore because of my health. I once asked members of my family to give some money to charity organizations, they refused and kept the money. I have a huge cash deposit of Eighteen Million dollars with a finance House abroad. I will want you to help me collect this deposit and dispatch it to charity organizations. You will take out 20% of these funds for your assistance.
I will like you to acknowledge the receipt of this e-mail as soon as possible and treats with absolute confidentiality and sincerity.
Regards,
Thomas James
The first thing that struck me about this one was how atrociously written it was. Not just in terms of spelling, grammar, punctuation and irregular capitalisation, but in terms of content. ‘…so I decided to write if your email is real, I have been diagnosed with esophageal cancer’. Hmm. So if my email isn’t real, would that mean he hasn’t been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer?
Ok so I’m being pedantic and facetious, but the point is that the logic upon which every aspect of ‘Thomas’s’ story is built is deeply flawed and the ‘facts’ don’t add up. Never mind how he came to possess such vast sums of money or the fact that a Portuguese national counts his wealth in dollars rather than Euros, if he has this much money, why is he not paying his legal team to sort his financial affairs rather than approaching random strangers? Where – geographiclly – are these foreign deposits, and if he’s too ill to contact his bank, how come he has the time to ‘browse’ for people to email his story to? The fact that my email address isn’t something I tend to post in the public domain also makes it unlikely that this character could have simply been ‘browsing’ and ‘spotted’ it.
In many respects, this is representative of many current spam scam emails in circulation. They’re not pretending to be from your bank or Paypal or eBay, it’s not an obviously bogus phishing email and there are no attachments or links to click. However, it does appeal to the recipient’s curiosity, gullibility and greed. I can’t help but wonder how many people are actually stupid enough to respond to such emails, thus providing proof that the sender has reached a ‘real’ email account and opening the gateway to who knows what.
Ultimately, while I do feel a degree of sympathy for anyone who gets conned in this way, there’s a large part of me that thinks they deserve what they get., after all, if no-one was foolish enough to fall for such obvious scams, there wouldn’t be any to begin with.
And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk.
