Needless to say I get lots of Nigeria scam style stuff too. The early ones, in the eighties, were sent by fax. Already then, it always was fun to read that they had chosen me based on very thorough research yet didn't even now my name ("Dear friend" etc.). Of course I trashed all that cr@p.
However, I recently got an e-mail from Hong Kong I just couldn't resist to answer. For brevity's sake, I'm posting my reply only; the original e-mail is the usual cookie-cutter message you all know and love.
Dear Mr. Cheung,
Thank you very much for your generous offer. I'm sorry to say I earned so
much money recently by transferring shady money from various sources (mostly
Nigeria, but also Romania, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Sri Lanka and a
few other countries) that I really had to stop the flood.
You have no idea how easy it is to earn oodles of cash just by providing
one's bank account number to those wonderfully trustworthy people and sending
them a bit of cash. I mean, for instance, you transfer 40 million USD from the account of
the widow of Sani Abacha, the former dictator of Nigeria (maybe you knew the guy in
person), to a Swiss bank, and hey presto, you earn 12 million bucks. Not bad. And
that was just the beginning.
You see, I'm not interested in earning even more money, otherwise our
authorities will tax me to death. However, since your e-mail is the first
contact made from China, I think we can still cooperate. I now have money to
burn, so there may be a win-win situation for both of us.
My request is very simple. For years I have been trying to find out how
genuine home-made Chinese noodles are made. I mean the really home-made, hand-pulled
stuff, not just how to cook a bunch of noodles out of a bag from the store.
You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to find a recipe on the Internet.
Granted, you can find many cute videos of Chinese cooks skillfully pulling
thousands of uniformly thin noodles out of a lump of dough, but nobody tells
you how to make that darned dough from scratch.
So, if you think you are able to tell me how to make that dough, I'll gladly
send you some of my dough -- oops, my money of course. Maybe you can ask
your grandma for her recipe. I think, I can easily cough up, say, 10 million
US dollars for a really usable AND genuine recipe. Now, is that a deal?
If you are interested, please forward the following to me urgently:
1. Full names
2. Occupation
3. Private phone number
4. Current contact address
5. Bank account number at Hang Seng Bank Limited, Hong Kong or any other
bank of your choice.
Needless to say that you will have to send the recipe first. You will
receive said 10 million USD after my wife and I approve of its
authenticity and practical usability. In short: no recipe, no money. Life is
tough.
If you are not interested or your grandma deceased without passing on her
treasured recipe (may she rest in peace), please delete this email and do
not annoy me with other recipes because my wife already has a whole library
full of them.
I am looking forward to your reply.
Yours really sincerely,
H. J. R.
Switzerland (right in the middle of all those Swiss banks, mind ya)
P.S.: For safety reasons I am providing only my initials. I am sure you
profiled me very carefully before you contacted me, so you certainly have my
full name and address in your files. Thanks for understanding my concerns.