They must think I'm stupid (in Off-topic)

"Dear Friend,

How are you and your family? Guess it is well with you.
I am Dr.John Gogo, I work as the Foreign Operations Manager of our bank here inBurkina Faso,West Africa. Although the world is a very small place and hard place to meet people with complete confidence, but as I have developed the trust on you, after a week fasting and praying i made up my mind to contact you for this confidential business transaction with hope that you will not disclose the secret of this great opportunity to another person.

There is an unclaimed sum Thirteen Million Two Hundred Thousand United States Dollars (US$13,200,000) in my bank, and when went through the records, I discovered that this fund belong to one of our foreign customer who died years ago, and no beneficiaries or claiamants were stated concerning to claim this funds. Therefore, your request as a foreigner is necessary to apply for the claim so that our bank will release the fund smoothly into your reliable bank account as the beneficiary/Foreign Business Partner to the deceased.

This fund was meant for a short term investment in my country unfortunately the beneficiary died untimely. So, if you accept to assist me, I will place your name as the person who has the right to claim the fund which will enable our bank issue you fund investment document to avoid your government or any body to question the source of the fund during the process of the transfer.

Hence you will be interested to assist me get this fund transferred in your account, I will reward you with 40% of the total sum while 60% will be for me. If you are sure of your trust, integerity for safe-keeping this fund in your account, contact me with your full detailed information including your private telephone number(mobile) for me to guide you on the best legal way to tender an application to claim this fund successfully from our bank. Again My coming to your country once the money transferred , Me and you will exchange our photos, For you to know me in your country airport,I am waiting for your urgent response."

Yeeeaaah... -sarcasm-That sounds legit.-/sarcasm-.

Nic, he spent a week fasting and praying. Appeal to religion. Everyone knows the US is full of Christians. Just do it.

Respond positively just to mess with him. Try sending in a pic of Hasselhof.

And make sure he proves it's him in the picture. Require him to hold up a notepad with a customized message and a timestamp.

There are plenty of these scams floating around, I've gotten one myself from someone claiming to be part of the government of Nigeria. Wikipedia also has these types of scams listed as primarily Nigerian Letters.

So what you've been told about Africa is wrong. There's no starving children, instead, lots of people sitting on tens or hundreds of millions that are trapped in bank accounts. There is so much excess money that they are always willing to give you almost half. XD

I wouldnt trust a guy who havent eaten in 7 days, the praying itself proves hes delusional, but not eating too.. thats high risk. christ on an airplane.

see www.419eater.com

I personally have won the european lotto, never been across the pond to buy a ticket personally but im confident i won :P

Heh... does anybody really receive this type of spam anymore out of anything but sheer accidental bad luck ? I mean, on web e-mail addresses like yahoo or gmail, they should have been almost instantly thrown in the spam-box automatically.
Also, the best way (from a purely personal standpoint) to deal with this type of spam is to delete it and forget you ever received it.

The general email account where I work gets these things all the time...

I had become used to them until we received a couple on the fax machine. Seriously, who runs an email scam on a fax machine?!?

And to answer the original question:
Yes, they do think (hope) you are stupid.

Well, statistically speaking, the very definition is that roughly 50% of humans are stupider than the average...
...and let me tell you, I wouldn't even try to refrain from calling the average person "stupid", because they kind of are
...and that doesn't even begin to cover lack of knowledge, which might cause even an otherwise relatively smart person to ACT really stupid
:)

From what I hear, the scam spam emails have an astonishingly high rate of success, something like up to 2% ending up sending at least a little bit of money.

I think I just found our method of affording a rent-a-coder!

Best response so far.

Actually, 50% of humans are stupider than the median. </nitpick>

I like the sound of this guy so I've sent him my details. I'll send all you losers a post card from my beach house in the sun when I get my money.

If you don't trust him then trust me. CM me your bank details and I'll send you a share when I get mine. I don't need it all...

Then there is this approach:

Hello,



My name is Mrs. Hellen Willaims; I work with the Trackingyouservice, a
consulting
Firm in London , UK . We are conducting a standard process investigation
involving
a client who shares the same name with you and also the circumstances
surrounding investments made by this client at HSBC Bank Plc.


The HSBC Private Banking client died intestate and nominated no next of kin to
inherit the title over the investments made with HSBC Bank Plc. The essence of
this communication with you is to request that you provide us information on
three issues:

1-Are you aware of any relative/relation having the same surname, whose last
known contact address was Madrid , Spain ?


2-Are you aware of any investment of considerable value made by such a person
at the HSBC Bank Plc.?

3-Can you establish beyond reasonable doubt your eligibility to assume status
of next of kin to the deceased?
It is pertinent that you inform us ASAP whether or not you are familiar with
this personality that we may put an end to this communication with you and our
inquiries surrounding this personality.


You must appreciate that we are constrained from providing you with more
detailed information at this point. PLEASE RESPOND BACK TO MY PRIVATE AND DIRECT
EMAIL ADDRESS;

(trackingyouservice05@gala.net) as soon as possible to afford us the
opportunity to close this investigation.


Thank you for accommodating our enquiry.

Yours sincerely,
Mrs. Hellen Willams,
Trackingyouservice
For: HSBC Private Clients.
This is a confidential message from Trackingyouservi

With such a large sample size and an almost perfect bell curve distribution, the median and the average are extremely close, but not necessarily identical.
That's why I said "roughly" and not "exactly" ;)