E-mail fiction
I love novels, but for sheer creativity nothing beats the e-mails offering me millions of dollars to help some overwrought African bank administrator who needs to clear his books of extra zeroes. The complex plots and international intrique make for great reading. And for comic relief, there's the mangled syntax and punctuation. Some recent excerpts:
-- I discovered that my branch in which I am the Manager made Twelve Million Eight Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollar [$12,850.000.00] which my head office are not aware of and will never be aware of ... I have since place this fund on what we call SUSPENSE ACCOUNT without any beneficiary. As an officer of the bank I can not be directly connected to this money, so this informed my contacting you for us to work so that you can assist receive this money into your bank account for us to SHARE, while you will have 35% of the total fund. Note there are practically no risk involved ...
-- MY OFFICE MONITORS AND CONTROLS THE AFFAIRS OF ALL OTHER BANKS AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN LONDON (UK). I AM THE FINAL SIGNATORY TO ANY TRANSFER OR REMITTANCE OF HUGE FUNDS MOVING WITHIN BANKS BOTH ON THE LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL LEVELS... MY CONDITIONS. 1. THE SUM OF USD$2M.ONLY WILL PAID INTO AN ACCOUNT I WILL PROVIDE YOU AFTER YOU HAVE CONFIRMED THE TRANSFER OF YOUR SUM INTO YOUR ACCOUNT ... 2. THIS DEAL MUST BE KEPT SECRET FOREVER ...
Have examples of your own? Here's your chance to enter them in the Read Street Spam-a-lot Hall of Fame.
While she always preferred The Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew, 
Comments
OK, those are just plain larcenous. The one that makes me laugh is from that poor, poor widow who is willing to share her late husband's fortune if only someone - my kind self, perhaps? - will help her get it out of her country.
In this same vein, several years ago, a friend introduced me to a nice man with whom she thought I'd have a lot in common. Not long into the evening, he began to go on and on about how corrupt and dishonest "Africa" is and I realized, he was telling me that he'd actually become involved in one of these deals! He told this long, convoluted story that included actually flying to "Africa" to sue for his money back and all of the time he was spinning this tale, I thought he was so cute to be making this up to entertain me! Turned out, he wasn't. Laughter: a poor choice of response on my part.
Posted by: Eve | August 18, 2008 4:30 PM