Thursday, February 12, 2009

John Paul Spam?

From: "John Paul"
Sent: Thursday, February 5, 2009 7:05 AM
To: Leesa
Subject: Gift From God

Good day,
I am Mr. John Paul by name, the former Director of operation with a bank in Republic of Benin, but am presently in London for investments programme, I left Benin 2weeks ago after I received a big blessing from God through a fund that was abandoned in our bank by a late customer.

I used my position in our bank there to transfer a big amount of money to a foreign account that belongs to a London Business man who is presently with me here in London. Before I went into the risky transaction with my partner, I first prayed to God and made a strong promise that I shall donate 10% of my total share of the money to the less privileged ones to any society.

Right now, you should contact my Church pastor in Benin. His name is pastor Markson Dums and his email is pastormarksondum@gmail.com. Ask him to send you ATM BANK CARD of one million five hundred thousand Euros (€1.500.000) which I kept with him before I left for London. You should quickly contact him concerning the Bank ATM CARD and be informed that I have forwarded instructions to my pastor on your behalf.

Call me on +447035921427 as soon as you receive the Bank ATM CARD from my pastor. Make sure you utilize the money for the help of the less privileged.

Regards,
John Paul
(KSJ)


My first reaction on seeing "Gift from God" by a sender named John Paul. The previous Pope is in heaven, and he is taking the time to compose an email to me, a member of his flock. Oh my God. Er, you know what I mean.

Then I start reading the note, and I am less pleased. This is not from a Pope who will one day be sainted. Naw, this is from some guy from Benin who is now in London. The second thing I find strange is that there are three letters at the end of the email – sort of like when you were in typing class and included your initials to tell people you typed the letter. Not sure that works with email, but it was amusing.

But then I thought: Is this real? First thing I looked at was the phone number. Hmmmmm. Country code 44 on the phone number. I looked that up in Google, and sure enough, it is an England country code. Then, I looked up where London is (I am American and not so good with the geography), and sure enough, London is in England. Then I looked up Euros, and sure enough, that is some type of currency. Like dollars, but colorful and you can spend the money in foreign lands. Plus, the author of the note used a bunch of surplus letters in composing the letter – you know, spelling "program", "programme." I read somewhere that English stick extra e's and u's in their words.

Anyway, the letter seems legitimate. Trouble is, I am still bummed out about not getting a Papal letter. I mean, I am not sure how far 1.5 million Euros can stretch – if it is anything like Lira, perhaps I can get a bamboo backscratcher and some Italian Ice.

Joe has been getting a lot of notes like this lately. Well, his email has. Apparently Joe and his email are separate entities, with different bank accounts and so forth. I sometimes wonder if he reads my email.

Me, I am going to see if I can get a bamboo backscratcher from Pier 1. I think I have come into some money.

5 comments:

Deb said...

*LOL* @ the initials at the end of the name! I first thought, (KJV), until I read it differently. I'm sorry you didn't get your Papal letter, but soon enough he'll be asking to use your bank account soon.

It's amazing that they still flood our email accounts with these b/s scams and yet, a lot of people fall for them. My previous boss was tempted to do this for them until I stopped it.

Weird what people fall for, especially the older peeps.

Cliff said...

Anyone named after two of the Beatles can't possibly be all that bad.

But seriously, the problem is these folks play on the greed of others. Remember the saying "If it seems to be too good to be true, it usually is."

Leesa said...

~deb: I really liked the initials as well.

74: never thought about the Beatles names and the Pope.

Grant said...

No one who references god so much could possibly be bad. I recommend you send him all your account details so he can just do direct deposit and not worry with the ATM card.

kathi said...

I kid you not, I get at least one of these daily. I always read them to my work mates, who never seem to get them. I don't get that, it's not like I've ever responded. I, too, have looked some of this stuff up, like phone numbers and they give you just enough to check out. I think I posted a couple of the really good ones on my blog awhile ago...funny stuff.

I've actually seen a couple of cases on court tv where people have counted on this money and was taken to court for not being able to cover it when their 'windfall' didn't come in. Sad.