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Monday, March 5, 2007

Is this our Steve H?


Book DescriptionDate: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 18:38:09 +0000 (GMT)
To: honbarrsedd4za@yahoo.co.inPROPOSAL FOR URGENT ASSISTANCE Dear Sir: I must solicit your confidence in this transaction. I am a high placed official with the Department of Finance Affairs in Lagos, Nigeria. I and two other colleagues are in need of a silent foreign partner whose bank account we can use to transfer the sum of $18,000,000. This are monies left by a barrister who died tragically in a plane crash last year...

Sound familiar? Congratulations. You have been selected to become a mugu, an expression African con artists use to describe the targets of their e-mail scams. But they drew a bead on the wrong guy when they started spamming Steve H. Graham. Like many Internet users, Graham eventually got tired of receiving mugu mail and decided to fire back at his wannabe swindlers.

Armed with a scathing sense of humor, Graham quickly turned the tables on his tormenters--with side-splittingly hilarious results. Whether he's referring to his fictional lawyer Biff Wellington, complaining about the injury he received while milking a lactating sloth, or offering the Preparation H helpline as his phone number, Graham--using aliases such as Wile E. Coyote, Barney Rubble, and Herman Munster--offers proof that spamming the spammers is the best revenge.
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5 comments:

  1. SteveHMarch 5, 2007 at 6:47 PM

    Nope, but I've thought about this over the many years I've gotten these notes. I even have an old hand written one with nice stamps from Nigeria. I've always wondered how one could reverse the scam. Perhaps I could get some help from my attorney at Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe.

    $18,000,000. They've gotten cheap over the years. It used to be a lot more. I guess this number is supposed to be more realistic.

    I'll have to pick up a copy.

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  2. TurbineGuyMarch 5, 2007 at 7:31 PM

    Oh well, it does sound like an interesting book doesn't it.

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  3. Catherine JohnsonMarch 5, 2007 at 7:35 PM

    It's really a book??

    (not too swift on the uptake here...?)

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  4. AnonymousMarch 6, 2007 at 6:25 AM

    http://hogonice.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. LynnGMarch 6, 2007 at 9:56 AM

    Wierd synchronicity going on.

    I just listened to a related story on NPR about scam-baiters and a similar book: Greetings in Jesus Name! The Scambaiter Letters
    You can listen to the story here:
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7688138

    The scam baiters convinced the scammers to create a video of the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch. You can view it on YouTube.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvyrzQldOKE

    ReplyDelete