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Oh the Nigerian Princes are getting creative...
Feature Blogs - Delusions of Grandeur
Written by Christopher   
Thursday, 18 February 2010 23:45
So, I am regularly a poster on craigslist advertising my web design services, and I get alot of spam because of it. It all goes to my junk filter but I do occasionally look through to see what is getting tossed out when I see this email below. It's clever, but still has those tell-tale signs of being West-African in origin. One thing the Scammers over there fail at is the way Americans talk versus the rest of the world.


Dear Friend,

My name is Buck John an America Soldier station in Iraq, please i need your help by keeping my two trunk boxes i discovered in Iraq which amounted is ($19.3M US Dollars), contact me through this email for more information,: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Best Regards
Buck John
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it



Aside from the usual give aways of bad grammar there are other clues. So giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming it could be not-so-brite soldier as certainly those do exist...

First of all we never EVER greet people as friend. The only times we do call someone a friend is if that person is indeed a friend, or they are someone that we know IS NOT a friend and we in a sarcastic way call them a FRIEND so as to call attention to the fact that we are not at all friends and shame on you for presuming otherwise. Secondly, While the name John Buck sounds believable, the name BUCK JOHN does not. While there may exist some Buck Johns in the world, How many have you met or even heard of? Next is a biggie. Even though we have many varying degrees of literacy in the United States, most Americans that are smart enough to read and write know how to spell America and its variations like American. Hell, that is one of the first things an American child learns to say in school. "I AM AN AMERICAN", not "I AM FROM AMERICA" or "I AM AN AMERICA SOLDIER". Americans tend not to separate their nationality from their personal self identity, they are seen as one.

When one American is talking to another American about money, or even a Brit to a Brit, or a Mexican to a Mexican, there is never a need specify the type of currency you are talking about, unless it is something other than the understood currency. If an American Soldier is trying to tell me he has a shit load of money, he says, "I have about 19 million dollars". I would understand he is talking about US currency. The only time currency would be specified is when you are talking to someone from another country or you are talking about a different currency altogether.

Finally, while "Best Regards" is still an acceptable way to close a letter, it is usually reserved for personal correspondence, and is really pretty formal. Too formal for an email from an American Soldier trying to give you a trunkful of money.

Nice try Princes.
 
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