Baiting the Email Scammers

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If you publish your email online, you know that you will receive an endless stream of scam emails, attempting to get you to send money on one pretense or another.  There is the widow of a high general in some third-world backwater who needs to cash millions of dollars in bonds, but can't do it due to some weird domestic law, so she is seeking your help in cashing the bonds for her.  In exchange for your service, you will get 40% of the bonds, making you rich beyond your wildest dreams.

Of course, there are fees to pay to the Babaloozian bank where the bonds are stored, and you are given a bank wire address where you will send the money.  After that, unforeseen bugaboos arise, requiring more fees, taxes and imposts, all of which you are required to pay.  Of course, all your payments simply go into the scammers bank account, and you are a huge fool if you believed any of this nonsense in the first place.

I usually mark such emails as "spam" and send them on their way.  However, lately I became annoyed at receiving the latest gambit.  It consists of an email from some unknown person with the message, "Did you receive my last email?"

To this last one, I replied:  "Yes.  We have disposed of the bodies as you instructed."

This prompted a second email from the scammer.  It begins:

Dear Partner,
Thank you for your response and concern, like i said earlier, i am Mr William Leung Wing Cheung (Executive Director and Head of Personal Banking), before the U.S and Iraqi war our client Gen. Aadel Akgaal Bastaan who was with the Iraqi forces and also businessman made a numbered fixed deposit for 18 calendar months, with a value of Twenty Four million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars only in my branch.  Upon maturity several notice was sent to him, even during the war which began in 2005.

It continues on for another few paragraphs, describing my role in the scenario so that I can get a piece of the mythical moola described.  Rather than answer the email with specificity, I reply:

Please put 25 million U.S. dollars in a knapsack decorated with a picture of Spongebob Square pants and meet me at the intersection of Looneytunes Blvd and Caca Place. There we will exchange the knapsack for my grandmother's special recipe for tater tots. Although not required, a box of Cuban cigars, Churchill size, will seal the deal.

Since these scammer scum speak little English, they may or may not see that they are being baited.  We'll see if I receive a third email from this scum.

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