I received a delightful e-mail, explaining how I could not only ‘earn’ a large amount of money, but also flick a ‘v’ at those nasty women-hating muslims (paraphrasing of their words, N_O_T mine…)
This is the e-mail
Dear Friend,
I am MRS. SUHA ARAFAT, the wife of late YASSER ARAFAT,the Palestinian
leader who died in Paris. Since his death and even prior to the
announcement, I have been thrown into a state of antagonism, confusion,
humiliation, frustration and hopelessness by the present leadership of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization and the new Prime Minister. I have even
been subjected to physical and psychological torture.
As a widow that is so traumatized, I have lost confidence with everybody in
the country at the moment.You view this website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3965541.stm .You must have
heard over the media reports and the Internet on the discovery of some fund
in my husband secret bank account and companies and the allegations of some
huge sums of money deposited by my husband in my name of which I have
refuses to disclose or give up to the corrupt Palestine Government.
In fact the total sum allegedly discovered by the Government so far is in
the tune of about $6.5 Billion Dollars. And they are not relenting on their
effort to make me poor for life. As you know, the Muslem community has no
regards for woman, more importantly when the woman is from a Christian
background, hence my desire for a foreign assistance.
I have deposited the sum of Fourty-Three million dollars with a Diplomatic
Security firm in Europe whose name is withheld for now until we open proper
and full communication.I shall be grateful if you could receive this fund
into your bank account for safe keeping and any Investment opportunity.
This arrangement should be known to you and I alone and all our
correspondence should be strictly on email alone because our government has
tapped all my lines and are monitoring all my moves.
In view of the above,if you are willing to assist for our mutual benefits,
we will have to negotiate on your Percentage share of the $43,000,000.00
that will be kept in your possession for a while and invested in your name
for my trust pending when my Daughter,Zahwa,will come off age and take full
responsibility of her Family Estate/inheritance.
Please note that this is a golden opportunity that comes once in life time
and more so, if you are honest, I am going to entrust more funds in your
care as this is one of the legacy we keep for our children.
In case you don’t accept please do not let me out to the security and
international media as I am giving you this information in total trust and
confidence I will greatly appreciate if you accept my proposal in good
faith.
Please expedite action. And you can reach me anytime on my private email:
suhazuha@aim.com
Yours sincerely,
Mrs.Suha Arafat
-=-=–=-=-=-=-=–=-=-=-=-=–=-=-=-=-=–=-=-=-=-=–=-=-=
So this is the reply I sent to the addresses mentioned, their associated abuse departments, and all my friends…
Dear Ms Suha Arafat,
My sympathies at this tragic time of your life. If you ever see this e-mail, hope you are doing well.
Dear Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms BLATANT 419 Scammer,
Your message is a bit low, even for someone with your obvious low moral fortitude. Please, if you must insist on trying to con innocent people of their money, do not sully a well known person’s reputation. Apart from anything else you sound sooooo much less convincing than when you all used to use random African politicians, that we in the West were normally ignorant of (General Sani Abacha or Alhaji Erowo Iman, for example). I hope that you earn enough money from other means to place food and drink on your family’s table, but know that some of the people you succeed in ripping of from within Europe aren’t well off themselves. Greedy and stupid for getting involved in this sort of scheme, obviously, but not necessarily able to spare the 1000’s you, on average, manage to extract before they give up or go and meet with shadier people in Amsterdam to ‘finalize’ the deal.
Yours,
The Owner of CactusTips.com (To any friends who read this, it is your UK friend in Kazakhstan, I BCCed (hence no chance the scammers will harvest your e-mail addresses) you in on my reply, in the hope that this message will bring this type of scam to your attention, please check out The 419 Coaltion Site , Anatomy of a 419 Scam & Wikipedia’s Article on 419 Scams for more information on this fraudulent attempt to fleece me of my money. And maybe then visit 419eater.com & scambuster419.co.uk to get a cheap laugh at the scammers being scammed themselves ;>)
PostScript to the scammers – I used to work in the Abuse dept for a British ISP, so on a positive note, I thought you’d like to know the standard of grammar and spelling in your type of message has come on leaps and bounds since I used to trace this type of fraudulent activity.
PostPostScript – Windows 98 !?!?! Please see the mail headers… I’m assuming you must be based somewhere on the African or Asian continent? (A cursory glance at the IP address indicates the registering authority for the domain associated is in Japan?)
Dear Abuse dept. of AOL/AIM & yahoo.com.tr,
I am formally requesting you immediately investigate the owners of the mail addresses suhazuha@aim.com & suhawa55@yahoo.com.tr .
I have pasted in the original mail header below. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require further information or assistance; in fact I would appreciate it if you could confirm receipt of this message, and that an investigation will be taking place. Whilst I understand that the relevant laws (in your judicial system) governing client confidentiality may preclude you from informing me of the exact action you will be taking against these criminals, I would like to know that action is being taken. You can use this address (email@cactustips.com) to respond via.
Return-path:
Envelope-to: email@cactustips.com
Delivery-date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 08:44:03 -0500
Received: from [61.120.100.243] (helo=yahoo.com.tr)
by beast.mkoh.com with smtp (Exim 4.52)
id 1GpPjF-0006pK-Uw
for email@cactustips.com; Wed, 29 Nov 2006 08:44:02 -0500
Message-ID:
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 03:20:47 -1100
From: "Mrs. Suha Arafat"
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-GB; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20011128 Netscape6/6.2.1
X-Accept-Language: en-us
(anti-spam-(anti-spam-mime-version:)) 1.0
To: "Mrs. Suha Arafat"
Subject: YOUR URGENT RESPONSE IS NEEDED
(anti-spam-(anti-spam-content-type:)) text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
November 30th, 2006 4:07 pm
Damnit, Mrs. Arafat wrote to me too. I was totally going to help her but it seems like she’ll hire just anyone. I figured it’d make an awesome resume cred!
November 30th, 2006 5:21 pm
Aaaaah, don’t worry, maybe we can do a 50/50 split on the millions we stand to make ;>