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June 11, 2008

This has been going around since at least last October, but one fell into by inbox today.

The message claims to come from the United Nations Foundation, telling me that I've been chosen as one of the final recipients to receive oodles of cash. None of that worthless USDollar dough...Pounds Sterling, yah! Here's the message in full (mostly to help seed search engines in case a more gullible recipient performs a shred of due diligence):

United Nations Foundation
1800 Massachusetts Avenue,
NW, Suite 400 Washington, D.C.
20036

Attention:

The United Nations Foundation (UNF),would like to notify you that you have been chosen by the Board of Trustees as one of the final recipients of £3,000,000.00 (Three Million GBP) for your personal, business, or educational use to aid the underpriviledge in your teritory/country The UN Foundation was created in 1998 with entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner‚s historic $1 billion gift to support UN causes and activities.

The UN Foundation builds and implements public-private partnerships to address the world‚s most pressing problems, and broadens support for the .U.N.through advocacy and public outreach. The .U.N. Foundation is a public charity and winners are selected without any criterary,

You are required to contact the Claims Officer below for qualification documentation and processing of your claims. After contacting our office with the requested data,you will be given the bank details contact to optain your donation pin number,which you will use in collecting the funds.

Please endeavor to quote your Qualification numbers (UNF-039455-UNOG) and Amount won in all discussions.

To file Your claims Send listed requirements to:

Contact European Finance Officer
Dr.Letts Roger Bernard
E-Mail- [removed]@sify.com
E-Mail-united_nations.claims@[removed-but-well-known-free-email-domain].com

Sincerely Mrs,Julie Hans
Chairman of the Board
© 2008 UN Foundation,All Rights Reserved

Now, there really is a United Nations Foundation at the Washington, D.C. address shown in the message, and funded in part by Ted Turner's billion-buck donation. But they don't hand out multi-million-pound awards on a whim—any more than Microsoft sponsors a Dutch lottery to encourage people to use the Internet. Nor would an organization with its own domain name have to use free email accounts in India and the U.S. to handle such "important" work.

I'll add a couple of BTWs ("by the way"). First, contrary to the signature in the message, Ted Turner is the Chairman of the Board for the U.N. Foundation. Second, I'd like the sender to contact me regarding my disregard for the copyright notice.