Spam of the day
This spammer doth protest too much, methinks. To begin with, the name “TNT Courier Service” does not inspire confidence. And then there are the disclaimers I have bolded:
I am Mr.David White , i have been waiting for you since to contact me for your Confirm able Bank Draft of $850.000.00 United States Dollars, but I did not hear from you since that time.
Then I went and deposited the Draft with TNT COURIER SERVICE, West Africa, I Traveled out of the country for a 3 Months Course and I will not come back till end of July.What you have to do now is to contact the TNT COURIER SERVICE as soon as possible to know when they will deliver your package to you because of the expiring date.
For your information, I have paid for the delivering Charge, Insurance premium and Clearance Certificate Fee of the cheque showing that it is not a Drug Money or meant to sponsor Terrorist attack in your Country. The only money you will send to the TNT COURIER SERVICE to deliver your Draft direct to your postal Address in your country is ($150.00US) Dollars only being Security Keeping Fee of the Courier Company so far.
Again, don’t be deceived by anybody to pay any other money except $150.00US Dollars. I would have paid that but they said no because they don’t know when you will contact them…
Etc., etc., and so forth…
Maybe this is why Obama has no paper trail. A lot of it looked like this until he became a confirm able American con man.
TNT is a large firm, originating in courier and transport services (which it still does). Think of it as Australia’s version of Federal Express. While originally Australian, the firm is international, although it appears it may not have much penetration in the US market (US markets are usually very competitive and difficult to penetrate).
Notwithstanding TNT is a legitimate firm, it think it’s safe to say your instincts regarding the legitimacy of the offer/advice are correct.
This is a Nigerian 419 scam letter. I’ve seen lots of them, and this is just another variant on that theme. Bottom line: the only money here is the money the scammer wants from you.
waltj: I’m well aware that it’s a Nigerian scam. I just think it’s a particularly humorous version in its details.
You’re getting a bargain, Neo. Only $150.00?
An email, similar to that comment, that I got last year wanted $250.00 as the “security keeping” fee.
Alas, I didn’t have it then, so I had to kiss off $1,000,000.00 dollars. (I think I would have bought a Porsche, toured the country, and had all sorts of fun.)
Such is life. 🙁
( I suppose it only needs a very tiny percentage of those fees to be actually paid for a scammer to make out pretty well. Sometimes, it really sucks to think what one could do if one had no concience at all.)
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It is fairly humorous. Most of them are, unintentionally so. I’m amazed that people still fall for them. And you’re right, Neo, $150 is much lower than the typical amount of $30,000 or so. Maybe hard times have hit the Nigerian scam industry as well.
Yes, TNT Courier Services is a real company, but, in this day and age, I think that they should be having second thoughts about having a name that is equivalent to “Bomb Carrier” and a task of delivering “packages” from around the world.
I also wonder who is still falling for these things. I used to have a patient who was utterly convinced she had won the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes one year. She was convinced that people couldn’t print that and send it to her if it weren’t true. Perhaps something like this is in play – people with a belief that there is some magical agency which protects us infallibly from such things, so those that get through must be legit.
I would love to see the numbers on political affiliation on this. As I would on Leno’s “Jay Walking.”
“I used to have a patient who was utterly convinced she had won the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes one year.”
And I would bet you this a contest that she had never even entered in the first place.
Some of these scams would almost (Hell; strike the “almost”!) have you believe that there are outfits just looking at random for people to give money away to.
I truly believe that most children would have trouble swallowing that.
What do you get when supposedly grown adults think that way?
November 4, 2008.
(Sorry; absolutely no way could I resist that one. 🙂
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I’m getting jealous. Pheromones? The apple? The hyphen?