I'm rich! I'm rich! I'm rich! I'M FUCKING RICH!

Now, can you loan me a couple of grand? You see, my mother needs an operation....

Gotta make sure they have all they need so you get everything that's coming to you.

I'm fucking rich!

I heard they got new microwaves. I can't wait.

I was the one in the office designated to handle this kind of communication. Some of our engineers worked in other countries and were somehow subject to these emails. Not wanting to spend any time on them, they sent the emails to me. I made a study of what they were, the different iterations, how they worked and what to do with them. For the first year, I duly reported them to (don't remember, FBI? Secret Service?). I happened to have a conversation with a Nigerian friend of mine about the efficacy of reporting. He said that individual reports aren't acted upon but that the numbers of reported scams allowed the US to put pressure on Nigeria to pursue prosecution of offenders. Usually, offenders just pay off the authorities and continue with their crimes. The result was that the 419 (the code section of Nigerian law which prohibits this scam) criminals simply moved to other countries and continued on. As time went on, I stopped reporting them and advised the engineers to just delete them without responding.

If you want some really entertaining reading check 419eaters dot com. There are some very creative people (with rules protecting their privacy) who engage these criminals in lengthy email exchanges that are quite amusing. The idea is that if they waste the time of the scammer, they have less time to target real victims.

But I'm sure YOU received the real thing.... right?

When you are a member with a certain amount of posts, you are assigned certain privileges. I was given the passwords to some of the Nigerian Yahoo e-mail accounts. Then I contacted the people that received the e-mails. Some of those people had already sent money to those crooks. Well, at least I was able to warn them against sending any more money.

419eaters contains some of the most imaginative writing I've ever seen. I briefly thought of joining, but I just don't have the skills it takes to keep these criminals on the line. And while enjoying the entertaining posts, it's also soul-satisfying to know that the goal is to keep the criminals busy so they don't have time to find real victims.

If I were you, I'd start using all my credit cards heavily right now, so there won't be any difficulties when you have your limits raised. Probably a good time to take out a large personal loan from the bank as well. Congratulations, you lucky dog, you!

I'm thinking you might want to hold off on buying that Corvette.

Any day now...