sucKERS and foolS

There is a saying: There is a sucker born every minute.Forgive me, I dunno the attribution, or whether I got it right word for word. The (in)famous Nigerian scammers may want to amend it to: There is a sucKER born every SECOND. Hence, five new sucKERS are born as I finish this sentence!

From The Star June 22, 2005, page 10:

Two foreigners nabbed over advance fee fraud

PENANG: Two African men who initiated a scam knon as advance fee fraud were arrested in Subang Jaya for cheating a 47-year-ol businessman of more than RM45,000.(Desiderata: it's near my partime workplace, and I'm NOT 47 years old!)

The Africans, in their 30s, were nabbed on Monday by Bukit Aman Commercial Crime personnel when they turned up to collect the final payment of RM65,000 from the bukit Mertajam businessman.

The victim had been corresponding with the Africams for a few months after answering an emial asking him to help transfer millions of US dollars out of their country.

Desiderata: Hey, I wont bore you with the details. Just recall: Remember the lady lawyer some years back who parted with tens of thousand of good Malaysian rinngit on promise by some Afriacns these notes could be transformed into US dollars several hundred times over? Is she practising law to earn straight money now, I wonder.

Those who have Email facilities for some time would have received such offers from Africans every other day. May I ask readers what do you do to such others?

In the early days, I thanked them for their generosity; asked them go dig a hole, jump in and have a party with their new found gold.

Later, I sent them a standard: Go fly a kite.

Nowadays, I just press on: DELETE.

I advise newies just go straight to DELETE. Just opening up such mail might expose you not just to tittilating tales of woe and hardship enroute to getting the millions, but your PC might suffer heartburn and go KAPUT! Mine did a couple of times. I blame it on the s(p)cams.

Ill end this morns diversion/excursion/entertainment? with another quote:

You can fool some of the people all the time; all the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time.

My 15-year-old nephew tells me its from American president Franklin D Roosevelt. We stand corrected.


PS: (at 11.25am) Opened my Email and sure enough, another potential scammer by the name of GREEN PASCAL, rhymes with RASCAL!, who fobs himself off as a consulting auditor, Ned Bank plc, Johannesburg, South Africa, has just sent me an email dated June 21, 2005 seeking my humble assistance to transfer out USD8.4million for a German client. Do I press delete? Think about it -- KIV since I've used it for reference in this posting.