Choke on These Quarters Scammer!!!

A recent Yahoo!/LA Times article points out how lucrative the Nigerian scamming business has become lately. The Nigerian "419" scam, named after the Nigerian anti-fraud statute (and I thought it was based on the number of these e-mails I get each week), is apparently lucrative business for the young parasitic, arrogant, greedy, moronic, pestilent, brain-damaged, lousy, criminal scumbags in the subculture of Nigeria who perpetrate it. Yes, I am sick of these stupid e-mails. However did you notice?

You get some scope of the problem when you learn that the Nigerian government has seized $700 million in the last two years relating to the scam. In a related story, Bill Gates just announced that he will be opening a new, as yet unnamed, division of Microsoft in Lagos, Nigeria.

Anyway, the scams go like this: You get an e-mail telling you that someone is in need or that someone has died leaving a large sum of money or that they are in jail, or that they've discovered oil, or that their hair is on fire and it really, really hurts (This last one is quite rare.) If you respond, at some point the perpetrator of the scam tells you that in order for the transaction or assistance to occur, or to put out their flaming coiffure, you have to send them a large sum of money. There are people who actually fall for this. Most of these are Amway salespersons, compulsive Lotto players, and Chicago Cubs fans.

In the LA Times! article, the scammers admit to targeting Americans because they think they are "rich and easy to fool." That and because French and Germans are too tight with the Euro.

"Vas? Hair on fire? Cry me Die Rhine mein Herr. Ha! Hair und Herr...Get it? (Extensive mirth von Deutsch ensues.)"

Seriously, there was even a popular song in Nigeria about the scam with the following lyrics:

"White people are greedy, I can say they are greedy
White men, I will eat your dollars, will take your money and disappear."

(Lyrics by Louis Farrankan)

My answer to all of this is for people to start fighting fire with humour. Write them back and make relentless fun of them. Dangle large sums of money in their faces in the e-mail and then tell them they'll never get a cent the poor theiving bastards. Below is a demo letter that you can use. Be sure not to sign your real name though, because these people are crooked and desperate and may seek revenge. If they ask, I didn't put you up to this and was, in fact, in Alaska at the time you wrote them.

**********

Dear Crook (Alias Major General Widow Hot Mama Flaming Hair Obesukye Obadanga, etc...),

Thanks so much for the post. I was deeply moved to hear that you lost your loved one, wallet, home, lottery ticket, whatever it was in the e-mail I barely read because I know you're just a pitiless scamming bastard trying to squeeze every drop of red blood out of me via my bank account.

It just so happens that the day before you sent the e-mail, I inherited over 10 trillion dollars from my great uncle's thriving donut business. Unfortunately for you, you will never see a cent of this dough, you nut. In fact, my company is billing you for the time I've lost reading your stupid e-mails. As my time is worth $1,000 an hour and I'm a slow reader, that's $70,000 you owe me.

I'll be sending F. Johnny Lee to collect. His method is simple and involves Ginzu knives and toenails (yours). Just don't let him start in about stare decisis or corporate law or his 12th wife. I wouldn't wish any of that on my worst enemy.

Bite Me You Theiving Douchebag,

Sign false name here

P.S. Hope the hair grows back even if the toenails don't.

**********

If you want to get really nasty with them, you might add how you noticed that Nigeria is out of the World Cup next year... Eat those dollars, scam-punks.