2006-03-15 - 12:40 p.m.
I�m so annoyed. A few days ago, I got a message on Friendster from a girl claiming she was new to town and looking to meet people. Now before you start, let me say that like most males on Friendster, I�ve gotten my fair share of stupid solicitations. Usually these are easily identifiable. Some alleged 19-year old with a porn star picture says she just moved here (geography is always hazy in these situations) from some former Soviet country and she thought your profile (which she didn�t view) looked interesting. Please email her at some non-Friendster account! You may receive racy photos!
I�ve never followed up with any of these, but I�d imagine the sender tries to get respondents to join a subscription website to view the hot photos. Or worse, tries to get banking information (� la the hilarious Nigerian �419� scams, where your assistance is requested in helping get 100 MILLION DOLLARS ONLY if you�ll only give them your account number, oh and also an advance fee). But this message seemed pretty innocuous. The sender�s profile said she was 29 and had a normal, G-rated photo. It had the �favorite music/books/movies� fields completed, which is usually not the case with obvious scamsters.
The message was pretty tame too. She said she�d just come to town from New Mexico for a job and was just looking to make connections, as she didn�t really know anyone here. She gave a Hotmail account without a suspiciously risqu� name to reply to. The message was furthermore in fluent English. Well, I figured. I endorse reaching out via electronic social networks (that�s how my friend Penelope originally found me). And if I was going to be conned, I�d rather it be perpetrated by an actual English-speaker. (Ethnocentric of me, no doubt.)
So I wrote back. I acknowledged that I was wary of replying at all, as the sort of hustles described above are just an unfortunate fact of the cyber-age. But I knew what it was to move to a new city. I�d only come to Chicago myself six months ago, moved here with my girlfriend-who-is-now-my-fianc� (Take note! Stay at arm�s length!). She was in a comedy show in this epicenter of American comedy and I had free tickets if she wanted to see it. I asked her to write back and show me she wasn�t a front for a cyber-scam from the former Soviet Union.
Goddamn it. Wouldn�t you know, �she� wrote back a few hours later. It was such an obvious cut-and-paste message, but personalized to make it specific to Chicago. Now she said she had moved from St. Louis. No reference was made to the contents of the email I had sent. The tone of this message was far more flirty. She said she had tickets to the Bulls-Trailblazers basketball game and wanted someone to go with. Then came the hook. All her personal info was on some bullshit �adult friend� website you had to pay to join. There was a long-winded testimonial about how great the site was. When I didn�t respond, I even got a follow-up email the next day asking me again to join.
The whole thing made me marvel at the extensive attention that must now be given to e-solicitation. Apparently, the standard method of just mass emailing everyone on earth is no longer effective. To effectively sucker people in nowadays, you have to do some actual legwork. The opening shot has to be carefully planned out so it doesn�t seem too risqu� and therefore suspect. Replies to respondents have to be customized, not necessarily to individual, but at least to geography. All for the pretty low payoff of getting more subscriptions to your website.
It seems to take such effort that you might as well get a legitimate job exerting the same energy. On the other hand, sending email and cut-and-pasting messages together is free. If anyone bites and takes things all the way, you�re essentially getting something for nothing.
To remind me of the good old days of electronic scams, one of my favorite old-school advance fee fraud emails is below. I got this a few years ago at a little-used webmail account that mostly just gets spam. Although the grammar is generally mangled, I think the phrase �we do not know ourselves before� has a certain tragic poetry to it:
ATTENTION THIS IS URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL
FROM: MR JEROME NKHOSI
ATT:DIRECTOR/CEO
ATTENTION THIS IS URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL
BUSINESS PROPOSAL
Dear Sir,
I know that this message will come to you as a surprise since we do not know each other before, but for purpose of introduction, I am MR.JEROME NKHOSI, the Chief auditor of AMALGAMATED BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA(ABSA) There is an account opened in this bank in 1980 and since 1990, nobody has operated on this account again.
After going through some old files in the records, I discovered that if I do not remit this money out urgently, it would be forfeited for nothing. The owner of this account is Mr. Smith B. Andreas, a foreigner, and a miner at Kruger gold co., a geologist by profession and he died since 1990. No other person knows about this account or any thing concerning it, the account has no other beneficiary and my investigation proved to me as well that his company does not know anything about this account and the amount involved is (USD$ 30.5M) eighteen million United States Dollars million dollars.
I am only contacting you as a foreigner because this money cannot be approved to a local bank here, but can only be approved to any foreign account because the money is in us dollars and the former owner of the account Mr. Smith B. Andreas is a foreigner too. I know that this message will come to you as a surprise as [here it is] we do not know ourselves before. We will sign an agreement, but be sure that it is real and a genuine business.
Please reply urgently so that I will inform you the next step to take immediately. Send also your private telephone and fax number including the full details of the account to be used for the deposit. I want us to meet face to face to sign a binding agreement to bind us together as partners and then the money will be transfered into the account particulars you provided which I presume is safe. Hence this money is transfered, I will fly to your country or any other country which is the fund destination for withdrawal, sharing and other investments.
I am contacting you because of the need to involve a foreigner with foreign account and foreign beneficiary. I need your full co-operation to make this work fine because the management is ready to approve this payment to any foreigner, who has correct information of this account, which I will give to you later. If you are able and willing to handle such amount in strict confidence and trust according to my instructions and advice for our mutual benefit, then contact me immediately because this opportunity will never come again in my life.
I need truthful person in this business because I do not want to make mistakes. I need your strong assurance and trust. With my position now in the office I can transfer this money to any foreigner's reliable account, which you can provide with assurance that this money will be intact pending my physical arrival in your country for sharing. I will destroy all documents related to this transaction , immediately we receive this money, thereby leaving no trace to any place. You can also come to discuss with me face to face after which I will make this remittance in your presence and two of us will fly to your country at least two days ahead of the money going into the account.
I will apply for annual leave to get visa immediately I hear from you, that you are ready to act and receive this fund in your account. I will use my position and influence to effect legal approvals and onward transfer of this money to your account with appropriate clearance forms of the ministries and foreign exchange departments. At the conclusion of this business, you will be given 25% of the total amount, 70% will be for me, and while 5% will be for expenses both parties might have incurred during the process of transferring this fund. I look forward to your earliest reply through my email or by my
Tel:+(27-83-330-0177)
Yours truly,
MR JEROME NKHOSI
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