I don’t know what website I recently put my email address into, but now I’m getting an email a day from Festac Town.
Of course, email phishing scams know no national boundaries, but Eamon Kircher-Allen looked at the most famous of them a few days ago: the great Nigerian oil email scams. The Nigerian government is making swift moves to clean this up, and Internet cafes in what was the belly of the email beast are no longer turning a blind eye.
But there’s still plenty of attention to go around: Craig Marshall emails me every morning and offers me a chance to invest in BP Oil. Ellen Williams is beside herself wishing love and happiness for me forever, although “you did not know me before,” and offers me 15 percent of her inheritance. I’m to write quickly, because her father was killed, and those who killed him will kill her, and even as she is writing and sending that very email, she is hiding. Emmanuel Lukas wants me to take advantage of the government of Ghana’s open bidding process and offer my rate for selling the country computers, stationary, lawn mowers and condoms.
But my favorite is from Usman Bellow, who wrote simply:
Next of kin is needed.
can you be a Next of kin and inherit $18.5M.
(I assume, of course, that the names have been changed to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent even before the emails slid over the wire.)
“next of skin” is probably more like it