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April 05, 2008

Today's episode of "The Life and Times of a Dead Nonexistent Multimillionaire" (aka 419 spam) is an incredibly detailed (aka wordy) fantasy, complete with intrigue of the inner workings of the private banking world. The tale refers to brand names you may have heard of (Bank of England, where the author claims to work) and names you haven't heard of, but sound believable (Mayfair Securities Co.).

This is a private matter, of course, so our friendly bank employee doesn't want you trying to contact him through official phone lines or email:

My official lines are not secure lines as they are periodically monitored to assess our level of customer care in line with our Total Quality Management Policy.

Use his Gmail account instead, he tells us.

Unlike some other appeals I've seen recently, this one even explains why the message I received was also sent to others exposed in plain view in the To: field.

We have scanned every continent and used our private investigation affiliate companies to get to the root of the problem. It is this investigation that resulted in my being furnished with your details as a possible relative of the deceased. ... What this means, you being the last batch of names we have considered, is that our dear late fellow died with no known or identifiable family member.

The batch that included my address had exactly 1000 addresses in it, alphabetized by email account name from ctwq to daroth. His investigation must have been very thorough, because my batch included 127 email accounts named customerservice, very fine individuals, indeed.

Our tale's author, however, probably wasn't even born yet when Richard Nixon, jowls aflappin', famously told the world in a televised speech that he wasn't a crook. Our storyteller repeats a bit of history with this tidbit (emphasis mine):

You may not know this but people like myself who have made tidy sums out of comparable situations run the whole private banking sector. I am not a criminal and what I do, I do not find against good conscience, this may be hard for you to understand, but the dynamics of my industry dictates that I make this move.

Just as when an unsolicited email message declares that it's not spam, anyone offering you a shady deal while professing that he's not a criminal...well, you get the picture.

There is one exceptionally true statement within the whole of this tall etale: He definitely does not find what he's doing to be "against good conscience."

It's easy when he has none to start with.