I didn’t receive any formal notice of his demise, but it appears the Nigerian Prince who was, at one time, so notorious for his spam emails, as blatant as they were transparent, has bought the farm. I suspect this because I recently received the following email from a Mr. Thompson Sibusiso, who was obtuse enough to use his own address as the inside address, even though he was emailing me. And he was polite enough to wish me Season Greeting; although, he neglected to say which season. I’m guessing he meant winter:
Mr. Thompson Sibusiso
351 Francis Board Street Metro Park Building
Cape Town, South Africa
Tel: +27 63 230 7626Season Greetings To You,
I am Mr. Thompson Sibusiso, a South African, I contact you briefly via this email in regard to my request to move and investment capital worth $45 MILLION USD TO YOUR COUNTRY. Hence I decide to open up communication when you CONTACT ME BACK ON MY PRIVATE EMAIL ABOVE FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION.
Best Regards,
Mr. Thompson Sibusiso
At the same time I wasn’t receiving any formal notice of the Nigerian Prince’s expiration, I also wasn’t receiving any official notification that South Africa had become the new spam capital of the world. Since Nigeria and Cape Town share a continent — and since Nigeria is a mere 92 hours north of Cape Town by car — I suppose that’s quibbling. But it seems to me that alerting people to changes in sources of spam might be the rough equivalent of meteorologists’ Early Warning Pinpoint Doppler, right? A little heads-up that a change is coming would be greatly appreciated, especially if some dude wants to precipitate a cool 45 mill into your piggy bank.
Anyway, that’s water under the bridge. (If the season for which Mr. Sibusiso offered his greeting really is winter, we’ll have to wait for the precipitation to melt before it can run under the bridge. But spring, as the saying goes, is right around the corner.)
In the meantime, you can use this generator to produce your own scam letters. My own modest example is here. If you don’t want to create your own, you can fall for mine. Fifty percent of the $39 million will go to me ($19.5 million). Forty percent of the money will go to you ($15.6 million). The remaining 10 percent ($3.9 million) will go to Mr. Thompson Sibusiso. Maybe he can use some of it to buy another season.
In any case, I leave you with a proverb from another famous Nigerian Prince, W.C. Fields: Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.
Good luck.
—
Image by Alexas_Fotos, courtesy of pixabay.com.