urban legends
You've seen them. You get them in your email like clockwork. You curse at the wasted time spent in clearing them out. Or conversely at the time spent trying to find the legitimate email drowned in the midst of your spam filter, which you have to have because of the sheer number of these things.
Nevertheless, some of them are interesting. As long as they're not in your mail box, of course. I do like the Neiman-Marcus one -- it's absolutely a hoax, but the recipe is delicious. That one seems to have died down online, though. A few are very specific and hence more believable -- a rescue group I'm involved with got completely taken in earlier this year with a circulating report about a box full of puppies found in the middle of the street. After the same report was forwarded to us from very different sources, we got suspicious and found that it was false.
But this one I'm thinking of wins the prize because as absurd as it is, people actually fall for it. You know this one. Fondly called the Nigerian Scam, it really comes in a variety of formats but you know how it goes. First, I must solicit your confidence in this transaction, this is by virtue of its nature as being utterly CONFIDENTIAL and TOP SECRET. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day. i have decided to contact you due to the urgency of this transaction...
I mean, who could possibly fall for something so blatantly fraudulent? It can be kind of fun to see how many creative versions come up -- I've seen escaped government officials trying to retrieve their money, various royal family members, improbable inheritances, many different countries (despite the name), and on the list goes. But honestly, I always regarded its believability factor as extremely low.
Well about two years ago I attended this dojo. I used to help out with the administrative end of running things and one day the chief instructor informed me that he was taking a trip to Europe for a few days. He was very mysterious when I asked him about it. He would only say that one of the students had asked him to function as a body guard for a few days in Brussels, and that it involved a good deal of money of which he'd get a percentage. He was going to go out a day in advance, set up a safe rendezvous point. All very cloak and dagger, but he assured me it was "completely legal, just something very delicate." While I was baffled, I also didn't really care, and just made sure the dojo ran smoothly while he was gone.
When he came back, he indicated that there had been "some kind of mixup" and they'd never met with their rendezvous. I shrugged and only raised my eyebrows when this was repeated next month, again with failure. Nothing else happened and I honestly forgot about this until some months later when I was helping his wife with some email or another. In clearing out her inbox, I saw one of these and marked it as spam; when she saw what I was doing, she sort of paled and clicked on it to look at it.
She finished reading it and gasped, "That was what my husband went to Europe for!"
Here's the kicker. He wasn't actually the one who fell for it. He was the bodyguard, remember? The student who hired him, who paid for his plane ticket, who put out $30,000 not once, but twice, was a mortgage broker.
Nevertheless, some of them are interesting. As long as they're not in your mail box, of course. I do like the Neiman-Marcus one -- it's absolutely a hoax, but the recipe is delicious. That one seems to have died down online, though. A few are very specific and hence more believable -- a rescue group I'm involved with got completely taken in earlier this year with a circulating report about a box full of puppies found in the middle of the street. After the same report was forwarded to us from very different sources, we got suspicious and found that it was false.
But this one I'm thinking of wins the prize because as absurd as it is, people actually fall for it. You know this one. Fondly called the Nigerian Scam, it really comes in a variety of formats but you know how it goes. First, I must solicit your confidence in this transaction, this is by virtue of its nature as being utterly CONFIDENTIAL and TOP SECRET. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day. i have decided to contact you due to the urgency of this transaction...
I mean, who could possibly fall for something so blatantly fraudulent? It can be kind of fun to see how many creative versions come up -- I've seen escaped government officials trying to retrieve their money, various royal family members, improbable inheritances, many different countries (despite the name), and on the list goes. But honestly, I always regarded its believability factor as extremely low.
Well about two years ago I attended this dojo. I used to help out with the administrative end of running things and one day the chief instructor informed me that he was taking a trip to Europe for a few days. He was very mysterious when I asked him about it. He would only say that one of the students had asked him to function as a body guard for a few days in Brussels, and that it involved a good deal of money of which he'd get a percentage. He was going to go out a day in advance, set up a safe rendezvous point. All very cloak and dagger, but he assured me it was "completely legal, just something very delicate." While I was baffled, I also didn't really care, and just made sure the dojo ran smoothly while he was gone.
When he came back, he indicated that there had been "some kind of mixup" and they'd never met with their rendezvous. I shrugged and only raised my eyebrows when this was repeated next month, again with failure. Nothing else happened and I honestly forgot about this until some months later when I was helping his wife with some email or another. In clearing out her inbox, I saw one of these and marked it as spam; when she saw what I was doing, she sort of paled and clicked on it to look at it.
She finished reading it and gasped, "That was what my husband went to Europe for!"
Here's the kicker. He wasn't actually the one who fell for it. He was the bodyguard, remember? The student who hired him, who paid for his plane ticket, who put out $30,000 not once, but twice, was a mortgage broker.