Flights

 I don’t receive Spam in my company e-mail account. What I always get are interesting emails from scam artists offering money-laundering proposals.

These are emails from scammers who offer to give you 35 percent of their loot from floating funds or bequests from dead people that they “urgently” need to launder into foreign banks.

I believe they are spawns of the “Nigerian Scam” (also known as “419 Letter”) that has been around for over 20 years. The scam originated in Nigeria where the criminal code "419" refers to what is known as "advance fee fraud" violations, hence the name.

I am not totally familiar with how the whole modus operandi works, but I suspect that after giving them basic information about yourself and your bank account, they would leave you broke—or more broke than you are now.

Besides the 419 Letter, I have so far received three new versions: One supposedly from U.K., another one from Iraq, and still another from the Netherlands.

I enjoy reading them because a) they give me the illusion that I actually have a huge fortune that scam artists are after; b) these emails are so creative you’d think their authors wrote “Catch Me If You Can,” and c) I knew they would come handy one day when I need to fill my column.

The emails are complete with details that are almost plausible and incredible keenness for human psychology. If you’re desperate to get rich via short-cut route, they know what button to hit. And if you are ill-equipped with logic, you might fall for the sinister trick.

The email from U.K. is supposedly written by the CEO of a company that sells chemicals and raw materials. The CEO, who identified himself as Jerry Yang, says his company needs somebody who “can help us establish a medium of getting our funds from our costumers in Canada/America/Asia as well as making payments through these representatives to us.”

Yeah, right. The CEO for a company that does international business cannot afford to travel overseas and personally establish local networks so he fires off random emails to strangers. He hasn’t heard of the Western Union either.

The email from a “widow” in Iraq appeals to whoever receives it to please help her recover her husband’s $25 million deposited in a security company in London, so that she and her children can leave the country.

“Mrs. Ghanimah al-Alawi Am,” who said that her husband, Al-Alawi, was killed by a U.S. soldier in Iraq, offers to give the recipient a certificate of deposit so that the money can be withdrawn.

In an obvious attempt to lend credence and authenticity to the widow’s appeal, the email was written in grammatically flawed English and misspelled words.

“If you are touch by Allah to assist me and can maintain the very confidentiality,” she writes, “there is an infomation I like you keep very very very secret.”

Oopps, sorry Allah, I didn’t mean to share the $25-million secret with my readers.

The one from the Netherlands supposedly came from the auditor general of a prime bank who has discovered a floating account worth $126,000 that belonged to a “great industrialist,” who died in 1998.

The auditor general Robin Van Koert is looking for a holder of a foreign bank account so he could immediately transfer the dead man’s funds before they get forfeited. If you approved the deal, he says, you get 35 percent of the loot, he gets 60 percent, and 5 percent “will be for expenses both parties might have incurred during the process of transferring.”

This Van Koert person, who is trying to steal someone else’s account, is looking for an “honest” person to cut the deal with. The business ties, he says, will continue “as long as you will remain honest to me till the end for this important business trusting in you and believing in God that you will never let me down either now or in future.”

This God-believing scammer promises to come meet you face to face so you could sign a “binding agreement.”

Yes, the two of you will put your illegal transaction in black and white.

Capping the letter, he says, “I need your strong assurance that you will never, never let me down.”

Never.

All one must have for these buncos to succeed are idiocy, gullibility and greed. I have none of the above. All I have is a pretty face, a fun job, and $16 in my bank account. ##