More shameless remarks by Larko

All of us have received Nigerian scam e-mails, i.e. scam letters camouflaged as a request to assist in a shady transfer of a large sum of money. The legends of those letters usually tell a heart breaking story of a daughter or widow of a prominent oppositional politician in a country that the intended scam victim is unlikely to ever have heard of. I received another one of those scam letters today.

Normally I would not have bothered to read the letter before deleting it and reporting as spam. This one caught my eye, though. It looked somewhat different. The sender appeared to be one sergeant Frank Steve.

This scam is obviously intended to hit the US market. “Sgt. Steve” is playing with the patriotic feelings of Americans. According to the legend he serves in the 3rd Infantery Division of the US army, which does indeed have troops posted in Iraq. The bait is, as usual, a share of the imaginary sum of 25 million US$. The origin of the money sounds fun:

SOURCE OF MONEY: SOME MONEY IN VARIOUS CURRENCIES WERE DISCOVERED IN BARRELS AT A FARMHOUSE NEAR ONE OF SADDAM’S OLD PALACES IN TIKRIT-IRAQ DURING A RESCUE OPERATION, AND IT WAS AGREED BY STAFF SGT RICHARD BUFF AND I THAT SOME PART OF THIS MONEY BE SHARED AMONG BOTH OF US BEFORE INFORMING ANYBODY ABOUT IT SINCE BOTH OF US SAW THE MONEY FIRST.

So the international accountants chasing Saddam’s hidden assets should not bother to look for off shore bank accounts. All they need to do is to scan all farm houses around Saddam’s various retreats in Iraq. I would never have imagined that old Saddam used to rely on barrels for his banking.

Just in case the scam victims should have any doubts, the good “sergeant” admits that the transaction is not quite legal but what the heck, we are all patriots, aren’t we:

THIS WAS QUITE AN ILLEGAL THING TO DO, BUT I TELL YOU WHAT? NO COMPENSATION CAN MAKE UP FOR THE RISK WE HAVE TAKEN WITH OUR LIVES IN THIS HELL HOLE. OF WHICH MY BROTHER IN-LAW WAS KILLED BY A ROAD SIDE BOMB LAST TIME.

Some risk, sure! Somebody might even take the trouble of routing back the scam letter just to detect that it originates far from Iraq. The police might be knocking on the door. But do not worry, “serg”, I’ll just delete the letter. But somebody else might be shameless enough to dig deeper.

Oh yes, this is a cutie. To increase the credibility of the scam, a link to a Washington Post news story is provided. Unfortunately though, the Post news desk seems to have deleted the story:

Bad luck! It would have been so nice to catch Washington Post reporting about money that never existed.