James

If you have an email address, you will be no stranger to the Nigerian 419 scam.

In a nutshell, these cheeky scamps email you with some sob story involving family tragedies and hidden multi-million dollar fortunes and offer you an obscenely large percentage if you send them your bank details and personal information. Instead of receiving your share of the swag, your account gets cleaned out and you end up with Nigerian egg all over your stupid scammed face.

This week I’ve received three such letters and I thought it was time to have some fun with a scammer who goes by the trustworthy moniker of Felix Damians.

Obviously I didn’t want to use my real name, so I registered a new email address (hairymonkeyflaps@gmail.com) and changed my name to Zsa Zsa Gabor.

If the original Zsa Zsa Gabor is reading this – and she probably is – then I apologise profusely in advance. I would also like to apologise to my fiancee Kittie who, unbeknownst to her, has unwittingly taken on the guise of my non-existent evil ex-wife, Griselda – the utter, utter bitch!



The rather nonsensical email I received is below. Excuse the terrible punctuation – Felix was obviously in such a rush to contact me that his keyboard couldn’t keep up with his blurry little fingers.

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On 12 May 2011 16:29,
From Felix Damians <dr.dan_bicici@yahoo.fr>

Hello Dear,

Pardon me for not having the pleasure of knowing your mindset before making you this offer and it is utterly confidential and is genuine by virtue of its nature.

I want someone like you to help me out after i had pray then believes that you are a good person and that i can stay with you for the rest of my life , am 23 years old , My late father is a wealthy and successful business man before he died , My mum died when i was a baby, i am the only child of my parents.

Before the death of my father he called me secretly in the private hospital where he was admitted and inform me to run away from his house because of his blood brother, who is my uncle, It was on that day,.my dad revealled to me that it was his brother who poisoned him to this level.

And he told me that he used my name to deposit ( us dollars 12.5million ) in the bank and he seriously advise me to transfer this total money to oversea account for my investment, where i will start my new life and finish my education , Because of this reason, i am soliciting your assistance for the claim and transfer to your bank account for the business.

Honestly speaking , i am ready to give you 15percent of this total money for your assistance and with extra 5percent for your expenses on phone call, please reply me now if., really serious to help me out so that i can tell you more about my intention and forward to you some of the legal papers after knowing you more better.

All about the money are legal and i have all the legal papers and documents of the money with me which the bank issued to my late father the day of this deposit,

Anyway,you can not understand anything now because it is a long story but please and please for God sake , reply me so that i can tell you more about myself and the transfer and also forward all the legal papers of the deposit to you.

Thanks and remain bless with your family as i wait for your urgent reply soonest,

Yours Felix Damians.

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Obviously I was thrilled that he had chosen me out of everyone else on the Internet. It was probably the friendly way in which he started the email with “Hello Dear” which set my inner warm fuzziness glowing with delight. I was also happy that he said that he “want someone like [me] to help [him] out after [he] had pray”. As a God-fearing man, he was bound to be honest and incorruptible. All religious people are honest and incorruptible. Fact.

So I grabbed myself a mug of coffee and composed the reply that I have printed below.

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Dear Felix,

Thank you so much for emailing me and may God bless you! Your email appeared only 30 minutes after I had prayed to Lord Jesus (blessed be his name) for financial support. My evil ex-wife Griselda has recently divorced me and she has taken almost everything I own and I lost my steady job as a fluffer on a movie set because the actors said that my technique was not exciting enough.

I am literally down to my last 10,000 dollars and before your kind email, I was thinking of killing myself by drinking a whole bottle of Gaviscon liquid.

I think that your offer of 15% of $12.5 million (I work this out to be $45,000 – please verify) is very generous, but I am worried about the 5% expenses which I have worked out to be just $170,000. I think that my expenses will be at least $200,000 because of the tax that I will need to pay on the money in this country. By the grace of Almighty God, I would ask that you could make the expenses to be 10% which I work out to be about $220,000 of the overall $12.5 million. If you could, in your heart, give me the $220,000 instead of the 5% expenses then I think we can definitely do business.

I am so sorry to hear the story about your farter. Your poisoned farter certainly made my eyes water. :’(

I learned how to be a most excellent farter from my own farter and I badly wanted to teach my farting skills to my own son, but my evil ex-wife also won him off me when we divorced. I was left with only my daughter who I do not even want because she does not even know how to cook.

As you can imagine, for the last few months I have stored a lot of pent-up farting because I have had no opportunity to be farting on my son. With this money you are offering, I could once again be a proper farter on him and give him all the loving farting that he can handle. You have made me so happy! God be praised!

If you agree to my above proposal, I would certainly like to help you out. I also need to know that you will continue praying for me and that you are a good Christian zealot. Because of my love of Jesus, I cannot accept money from non-believers as in my country are known to be in business with the devil. Grrr!

If possible, so I can verify you and make sure that you are a true and God-fearing person, I was wondering if you could send me a picture of you praying to God and Jesus. It would also help if you could hold a sign which says the following:

I WORSHIP HEAVENLY FARTERS

This way I will know that you are a genuine person with a religious heart. I must also insist that this is all done in the utmost secret because I cannot risk my evil wife Griselda to hear about this.

Please write back to me and tell me how we should proceed with this. Because of my terrible financial situation, it would be good if we could do this quickly because in two weeks the Orcs will be coming from Mordor to take back my car and house and unless I get the money soon, I will be homeless.

By the grace of God, we will speak soon, but please do not forget the photograph I asked for so I know that you are an honest, god-fearing person.

God decreed that we should be brothers.

Yours

Zsa Zsa Gabor
hairymonkeyflaps@gmail.com

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I genuinely feel as though we have bonded and he could become a good friend to me. I am now waiting for his reply with baited wallet!

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