Blessed are the receivers of scam e-mails

DOWN TO EARTH

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By Ritva Korpimo
     
      Many of us in recent years have received e-mail messages from Africa, often emanating from Nigeria.
      In these, some unfortunate descendant of a royal house or close relative of a deposed President has poured out his or her problems to us: there would be dollops and dollops of money and precious stones that were stashed away by the fair-minded former ruler, if only a trustworthy person could be found to lend his or her services as a go-between in the transfer of the riches and the placing of it in a suitable offshore bank account.
      It is indeed fortunate all round that the writer has heard of me, a person of honour and conscientious bearing. If I should only agree to assist in this venture, my pains would be rewarded many times over, and so on, and so on.
      I have not agreed to lend my services, and with the notable exception of the former veteran Finnish politician and one-time Foreign Minister Olavi J. Mattila, not many others have, either.
      The messages have almost dried up.
     
I perked up considerably, then, when not so long ago I got post from Sri Lanka in a similar vein. In this example, a merchant, suffering from some form of terminal cancer and anticipating his speedy shuffling off to a better place, hopes that I would take his immense fortune off his hands in order to pass it on to the deserving charities of the merchant’s choosing.
      My commission for doing this favour would be very considerable. The merchant had chosen me because his nasty relatives would only squander all the funds put in their charge, spending it on their own selfish ends.
     
Most recently, fortune smiled upon me from closer to home, from Great Britain. I received an e-mail from an attorney named Tony Peter Johnson, who informed me he had worked for 30 years as the family solicitor to a Billy Johnson and his wife.
      Shortly before the 2003 plane crash in which the couple tragically lost their lives, the solicitor had witnessed the drawing up of their wills, and waddyaknow: everything was to go to God-fearing and devout individuals in order that they might be able to perform increasingly impressive services on the behalf of Our Lord.
      And did the solicitor adhere to these last wishes?
      Of course he didn’t. He decided instead to put all USD 12 million into his own pocket.
     
But he did not dare to take the money to the bank, as in his view this would only have led to the government getting its hands on the monies originally intended for the Lord and using them for its own profane purposes.
      So he stashed the cash in a safety deposit box in The Netherlands.
      Only then did the good man-of-law discover God for himself. He has already been forgiven for his sin by the Almighty, but a few practical matters remain unresolved: the secreted fortune should now be distributed in accordance with the terms of the will of poor Mr and Mrs Johnson.
      It must go to some honest Christian who deserves all 12 million dollars with which to praise the works of the Lord.
      And that person is ME!
     
"I found your name while browsing through Christian websites", writes solicitor Johnson. "And that is not all. After praying most powerfully, I received word from the Almighty in which you were singled out by name."
      And whyever not? My youngest son, for instance, received post from Nigeria in which he was told that he had been selected because "the original owners of the property had the same name as you, Mr. Ukko." How on earth did they know his first name?
     
I read Mr. Johnson’s message twice before I decided to pass on to the next item in my inbox.
      What a shock I got when I noticed that I was not actually in my own inbox at all. In his divine intervention, the Lord had not in fact given solicitor Johnson my name, but had pronounced the name of the Helsingin Sanomat Tampere Office, where five of us work.
      Five upstanding Christians? You bet your life. Five people can naturally find five times as many suitable ways of using the money on behalf of the Lord as one can.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.1.2005


Links:
  Scamorama - everything you need to know about e-mail scamming and about scam-baiting - one of the literary genres of the early 21st century

RITVA KORPIMO / Helsingin Sanomat
ritva.korpimo@sanoma.fi