Neigh on 10 years ago someone decided scams needed to take the next logical step. After messages were carefully crafted, those first scam emails were disseminated. The minute the first person opened their inbox and saw that offer from the “Deposed Leader of Nigeria”, those scammers started making money.
Since then, scammers have tried new ways of luring stupid people into their binary clutches. They’ve tried credit card fraud, data-mining bots, and “get rich quick” promises. To put it simply, they’ve evolved.
This morning, I received a blast from the past. A scam email so sneaky it made it by gmail’s careful spam filters yet so bad as to remind me of those good ol’ days of “I cannot lay claim to this money unless I transfer it out”. Riddled with it’s “mutual benefit”…I give you General Arnold Quaninoo:
Title: “I do kindly wait on your reply for the investment.”
Body:
Dear Sir/Madam
With warm heart I write you this mail in respect of my intention of investing my mineral resources in your care as my trustee to oversee the investment due to my political affiliation with the united nation as former peace keep.
I am General Arnold Quainoo seeking your advice of investing the above mention investment in your care due to trust and confident that I have build in you for the mutual benefit of the investment and our children. I need your undivided attention as to what my proposal is about.
Kindly notify me of your interest in order to proceed with the investment for what it with stand for. In respect of the investment mention above, with your interest to this investment, I shall offer you a negotiable percentage endorse by signatures for feature reference.
I kindly wait on your reply for our mutual benefit.
Best Regards:
General Arnold Quainoo
Email: gen.arnoldquainoo@gmail.com
What’s great about this is that General Arnold Quainoo is an actual person. You can put him into google and find articles, websites, and videos of the good General addressing issues in Liberia. But, obviously, he wouldn’t have a gmail account starting with his title of “gen”.
5 points for creativity, -3 for grammar and punctuation, and -2 for originality. Sorry, General. Evolution’s much harder then we all thought.
on Sep 8th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Ohhh, ye good olde spam emails. I made a poem once with all the titles of various spam messages I’d received. It was quite funny. Congratulations on falsely hearing from a real person, though! I haven’t gotten one quite that good.
on Jun 17th, 2011 at 1:23 am
Yeah, I get those all the time, Yahoo’s spam filter is no where near as good as gmails. Whats sad, is with that exact email im sure quite a few people actually give out their information. If it didnt work, the spammers would stop…