March 11, 2000

2:59 AM

Can you help a brother out with a little money laundering?

So, I was thinking about this otherwise unremarkable spam while cleaning out my inbox when it dawned on me how familiar it was. I have seen this letter (with slight modifications to suit the contemporary political news from Nigeria) three times in my life. The first one I remember was over 10 years ago (on oniony paper, soft brown fibery envelope, red mock-official stamp). And I was wondering: how many of you have seen a postal version of this letter? Did I just fluke out, or is this letter so common that it is some obscure junk mail counterpart to Coca-cola, Princess Diana & Baywatch? I kind of like to think of it as the fraudspam equivalent of the nervous Don Knotts.
posted by sylloge (1 comment total)

I recently received a variation on this theme about five times in the course of three days. Only this time it was ten million dollars which "buried", and the person doing the writing was a woman whose husband had been assassinated, or some such drivel.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:54 AM on March 11, 2000