Filed under: poetic justice
[From SCIFRAUD, a mailing list about fraud in science, from a listmember with long experience with fiesty exchanges.]
Dear Colleagues,
I post this information in the hope of preventing any of you from falling victim to the now-famous Nigerian Scam…
Those who wish to learn how to avoid falling victim to such scammers might find instructive the website in which the intended victim actually got money ($3.00) from the scammer… Following is the final e-mail by the intended victim:
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 17:01:58 -0800 (PST)
From: “Kindly Contributor”
Subject: I GOT YOUR ANSWER RIGHT HERE
To: “ESCOBER TONY”
Dear Mr. Anthony Obodo:
1. I write to you with great sadness and a heavy heart. It is
difficult for me to explain this to you, but the time has
come. Hold on to your seat.
2. Anthony, there really is no Lay-Z-Boy recliner. There’s no
ski trip booked to Zermatt. There’s no waffle iron or big
screen TV. I haven’t bought you a house, nor do you have
business class bookings on British Air. There is no pending
Western Union transfers, no visas, no cousin Harry. I am not
Kindly Contributor. But then, you’re not Escober Tony Sankoh.
There’s no $15 million, and I’m not getting my cut of $1.5
million. You are not in a refugee camp, and it is highly
unlikely that your criminal enterprise includes a pastor,
your momma, or a shot-dead sister.
3. There are only two established facts: (i) you actually
sent me $3.00 (HA!); and (ii) you are without doubt the
dumbest criminal on the planet. Consider your chain jerked.
4. This second point is worth dwelling on given its
incomprehensible magnitude. I cannot believe how incredibly
stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard
stupid. World-class, A-1, top of the heap, triple whopper
with cheese, supersized stupid. So stupid that it goes way
beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of
stupid. One-of-a-kind, global, universal, intergalactic
stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid
collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have
collapsed. Stupid so dense that no intellect can escape.
Singularly, extraordinarily, incredibly, bewilderingly
stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit
more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a
year. Quasar stupid. Your life is a monument to stupidity. I
am breathless that anyone or anything in our universe can
really be this stupid. You are a primordial fragment from the
original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so
uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of
stupidity that we know. A behemoth, a leviathan, a colossus
of stupidity.
5. Given the sheer immensity of your idiocy, I cannot in good
conscience send you back the $3.00 as requested. Instead, my
friends and I are going out tonight to jubilate and drink
some frosty cold beers with your money. We will celebrate the
fact that you will go down in history as the dumbest “419”
scammer in the history of scams.
6. As an aside, you may be interested to know that we are
also sending all your emails and information to the Ghana
Police Service, the Accra police, Ministry of National
Security, Drug Enforcement Agency, all the “Nigerian 419”
scam web sites, the US Secret Service, the Accra newspapers
and Interpol, along with your Mobitel cell number
00233-2760-7048. It is our fervent hope that they will hunt
you down like the scabby parasite-laced dog that you are, and
shut down your criminal enterprise.
Later, you knucklehead.
On yeah, one more thing: I ain’t your Daddy!
I wish I could write like that.
Cordially,
[name redacted]