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June 17, 2009

My friends will tell you that by my very nature, I dislike violence. But when an emailing crook not only plans to rip off innocent victims and he wastes everybody's time (including his own) by being stupid, I just want to grab the guy by his necktie and give him a good slap across the face. It would be meant as a deterrent to not try this again.

What triggered my violent side today was yet another 419er with a lottery, or rather "award", winning announcement that stupidly exposes 400 recipient email addresses in the message (apparently a magic number for 419ers). There was also a glitch in his botnet that caused more than three-fourths of the list to appear in the body of the message.

The letter from "Mr. Stafan Smith" opens:

Dear esteemed recipient,

That's in the singular. What are my 399 co-recipients supposed to think? Does that mean that all 400 of us share the same "winning code"? (Sshh! It's 09PAD.) I'm not splitting the $2 million 400 ways. No way, dude!

How did I/we qualify for this award?

You have been selected due to the fact that you have sent more than 3 txts/email messages in 2months

Let me at 'im!