Le Spam

Scott Hardie | December 24, 2005
It took over a year, but it finally happened: Someone bothered to fill out the contact form on this site to send me spam. The whole reason I put it up there was to get my email address off the site so only human beings using a form could reach me. Somebody's dedicated.

The message is the usual Nigerian email scam, except in French: Plus cher Aimé En Christ. Je suis Mme Mabel Edward. Je suis marié à M. Alex Edward l'ancien ambassadeur du Kowéit en Côte d'Ivoire pour neuf ans avant qu'il est mort par année 2003. Nous étions mariés pendant onze années sans enfant.Il est mort après qu'une brève maladie qui a duré seulement quatre jours. Avant sa mort nous étions encrés en Christ. Après sa mort j'ai décidé de ne pas me remarier ou d' obtenir un enfant en dehors de ma maison matrimoniale que la bible exige. Quand mon défunt mari était vivant il a déposé la somme de 2.500.000 de dollars à une banque ici à abidjan Cote d'Ivoire.Actuellement, cet argent est toujours en banque... It goes on and on.

Amy Austin | December 24, 2005
Hahaha... I don't know, Scott -- I think people (programmers) are finding ways around those stopchecks. An MSN group I belong to (and have assistant manager permissions of) recently had a membership request from an address that included the nickname "hotstdhere" -- and even though I was suspicious of the motivations of said requestor, there is also a field there that requires a "human response" for acceptance (presumably, for the same reasons of blocking spammers), and the site manager allowed membership. Well, just as I suspected, the very first post this new member made was a very rote invitation to an "adult friend finder" group site... posted at 0500 Eastern time -- leading me to believe that there was a definite automated quality to the whole thing. I deleted the post and cancelled membership, informing the manager of this abuse that I saw coming. She agreed that it seemed predictable, but that the address had been valid and the human response portion had been filled. Seems indicative of clever law making the way for cleverer criminals...

Scott Horowitz | December 27, 2005
How'd you know it was the Nigerian scam if it was in French??? I gotta admit, sometimes spam subjects crack me up

Amy Austin | December 28, 2005
Hmm... well, there's the requisite mention of Cote d'Ivoire (usually the country of choice for this scam -- they must be the African equivalent of Switzerland for dirty bank accounts!), and surely you can see the word "banque"/bank, in conjunction with lots of money... as well as "ambassadeur" -- if you're familiar with the English version, this much should be enough to ring some bells.

I suppose it's not fair for me to answer, since I do know French, and the question was meant for Scott, but it still seems apparent enough. ;-)

Scott Horowitz | December 28, 2005
I was kidding

Amy Austin | December 28, 2005
Oh.

Scott Horowitz | December 28, 2005
yep

Denise Sawicki | December 28, 2005
Wait, the quoted segment doesn't exactly make any sense, it seems to say that they were married for 9 years before he died and they were married for 11 years without any children. I mean you can't exactly have children with your husband two years after he dies. Someone with a better understanding of French might make sense of it, or maybe it is just nonsensical.

Amy Austin | December 29, 2005
Heheh... good catch, Denise -- I had only skimmed it before, but I re-read it more closely, and I can't figure out why, either... unless she's counting the possibility of a post-mortem gestation? (Because -- technically -- you *could* have children with your husband for up to 9 months after he dies!) However, this doesn't really answer that discrepancy -- even rounding in any direction should only make for a difference of one year! Either way, it does sound "nonsensical" (at best)... or just plain creepy/obsessive (maybe she still has some frozen sperm lying around???) Kind of makes you wonder about the folks who put this stuff out there -- do they really and truly think that someone will fall for it and send out their sensitive financial information... or is it just for laughs? Maybe someone's perverted way of looking for a penpal??? Who knows.

Michael Paul Cote | December 29, 2005
It's a scamspam. why does it have to make sense. I've gotten one even better. I visited and signed up on myspace.com and got a personal "letter" complete with picture, of an attractive young lady asking for money so she could get back home from her "vacation" (don't remember where she was). Complete with guarantee of a personal "thank you" when she got back. The nerve of some people.

Scott Hardie | December 30, 2005
Well, I only pasted the top 1/3 of the message, so maybe the rest went overboard with a detailed description of the Edward lineage. To paraphrase Michael Chabon, maybe it was when they got into the family dental history and the geneaology of their horses.

I've been receiving junk messages at my Friendster account from other users. The message is a soft come-on inviting me to visit some porn site, but when I click on the user bio to see who sent it, the user has invariably been deleted. Me, I can't wait till we have that problem on this site. It was hard enough cleaning up after those assholes from Something Awful stormed the user registration with x-rated names.

I read an article about the Nigerian scam – how unfortunate for that country to be indelibly linked to scams now; maybe they need someone's famous niece to take her clothes off too – and apparently the scams are successful a lot more often than we'd think. There are always people who will take something for nothing. One of my father's clearest lessons to me as a kid was not to be blinded by greed: When I saw senior citizens on the news heartbroken over losing their life savings to some shyster on the other end of the phone, he reminded me that they gave up their contact information because he promised them something for nothing (in that particular case). It's the easiest way to hook somebody. Anyway, by now, the scam is probably losing effect because it has become so famous, but for a while, it worked. If you send money, it escalates and they tell you that you have to come to Africa to collect the fortune, and they abduct you and hold you for ransom. That has to be the worst use of your holiday vacation, other than maybe this kid: (link)

John E Gunter | December 30, 2005
I read a blog from a guy, can't remember what his name is now that I thought was extremely funny concerning these scams. Course, since most of what he used is from European/North American literary culture, it's not surprising that the scammer was taken in.

So what did the guy do? Well he wove a tale that he was interested in helping get the money because he was researching an ancient religion. Of course the scammer, having never heard of this religion was extremely interested, because he, being a believer himself thought that freedom of religion was extremely important. After several e-mails, during which the blog guy made it sound like he was being religiously persecuted, the original person the blog guy was portraying was killed.

Next the blog guy took on the portrayal of an associate of the original researcher, saying that the research had been murdered. The police were investigating, which in itself made the scammer nervous and eventually made him tell the associate to never contact him again!

So what was the name of the god of this ancient religion? Chtulu!

I'm not sure if the blog was a hoax or not, but after reading the whole thing, I was extremely entertained and hoped that it was real. If I ever run across the web address again, I'll post it here for your entertainment!

John

Scott Hardie | January 8, 2006
I've read a similar one – would-be victim pranks the scammer by claiming to represent a made-up religion – but in this case it was all based on Frasier. He used David Hyde Pierce for his photo, John Mahoney for the senior priest at the church, and so on. Funny, though it seems like a whole lot of trouble to go to.