Last Stand Of The Internet Scammers

As I've said many times before and shall say many times in the future, they never take a hint. The internet spammers and scammers try to infest our posts and email with pointless spam and comments.  Just the other day a spam comment in Portuguese made it past the spam filters into a post on my photoblog- ironically for a blog that condemns Portugal as apparently the worst place on the planet. Oh, yes, that's the sort of comment I want sticking around. And then there's the Mumbai escort agency that keeps somehow getting past my spam filters on recent posts with lists of their services- something that they do to a good number of photoblogs, I've noticed. And apparently no matter how many times you report such a spammer, Blogger doesn't seem to take notice of it. If anything in the world deserves to get turfed, it must be a page that's nothing more than a prostitution catalogue for a place on the other side of the bloody planet.

And then there are the internet scammers, who send endless amounts of scam emails trying to sink their hooks into a gullible rube. Such is the case with this one.

Dear Sir/Ma,

My name is Mrs. Ruphina Bruce, I am 89 years old widow living in Malta island close to Italy, I am the Mother of late Mr. James Bruce my only son who was a minister of Aviation in my country Malta. My son James and his wife died 5 years ago in Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that crashed on the 8th of March 2014,please you can visit this link

for more details of the plane crash that killed my son and his wife.My son James and his wife left behind their only 9 years old daughter whose name is Melina. Melina is my only grandchild and the only heir of my late son Mr. James Bruce.

My son James was not a billionaire but the little he left for his only daughter Melina before he passed on if it is well managed by a good business man or woman in the foreign land; I think my granddaughter’s future will be secured.

My dear, my utmost reason of writing you is because I need your urgent assistance, I want to send my granddaughter (Melina) to you so that she can live with you in your country, this is a very hard decision for me but my condition has forced me to do this which i must do urgently because the doctor said i have little time to live due to the Cancer disease i am currently battling with, my granddaughter (Melina) is very young but rich and lonely,i am the only family she's got ever since she lost her parents, but now i am very old and weak and if anything happens to me she does not know what to do or where to go, this is why i am asking you if you can adopt her and take care of her like your own child.

please do not worry about the cost of securing Melina’s traveling document and her welfare because Melina is Rich, Melina’s father had deposited the sum of $21 million usd in Universal bank for Melina and instructed me to handle the online login to the account to Melina when she turns 18, But since i do not have much time to live due to old age and my poor health condition i therefore seek your assistance and honesty to help me adopt melina to take good care of her and handle the funds for her.

With the online account login details which i will hand over to you will enable you transfer the fund from the account to any other bank account of your choice,Please I want you to use part of this money for Melina upbring and her education, then invest the other part in a good business and most importantly, I want you to take good care of Melina, give her all the support and love she needs.

My dear, I am writing you because I am very old and weak now, I can’t walk or even see clearly, what you are reading now was writing by my house help “Jonny” with my instruction, so please do not get me wrong because I can’t even see the letters on the computer keyboard let alone type a word. I do not speak English, I speak Maltese so everything here is translated

As soon as I hear a positive response from you, I will release the online bank account details to you to enable you withdraw the required fund to arrange for my granddaughters trip to meet you in your country. .

Thanks

My greetings to you and your family

Mrs. Ruphina Bruce.

Oh, sure, nothing can possibly go wrong responding to that, right? And if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to see you. 

Ruphina Bruce (what a name) starts off by not knowing who I am. She can't decide if I'm a Sir or her Ma. She claims that her son James and his wife bought the farm as passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. She also makes the claim that her son James was a minister of aviation in her home country of Malta. Well, let's start with these two outright lies, shall we? Because not only is she using a tragedy to spin her totally fake sob story, a simple check of things can show those first two claims to be a lie. First, Malta doesn't have a minister of aviation. It has a transport minister. There's a difference. Second, there's no James Bruce listed in the passenger manifest on Flight 370. Nobody named Bruce at all. And of the nationality list for that flight, there's nary a Maltese citizen to be found. And while we're at it, let's face it, does the name James Bruce sound like the sort of name you'd expect to come across in Malta? 

Ruphina (not her real name) spins the tale of her surviving grandddaughter Melina (there is no such grandchild), repeatedly writing the same name over and over again as if we weren't reading it the first time. She capitalizes words that don't need it, and fails to capitalize words that should be, surely a hallmark of your standard internet scammer. She claims that Melina is the only heir to her father's fortune (for a non existent cabinet minister for a non existent ministry, James Bruce must have made a mint), and that now that she's dying of cancer (of course it's cancer, it's the go-to disease for internet scammers. Why can't one of these nitwits go for variety and spin an Ebola sad story?), she has to see to it that some foreigner will raise her granddaughter right and take care of the money. She's asking said foreigner to adopt that infuriating brat Melina and handle the funds. The totally non existent funds, because let's face it, that 21 million dollars doesn't actually exist in any bank account. Neither does the house help "Jonny" that she claims is doing the writing for her. He doesn't exist either. 

And neither does Melina- and even if she did, what kind of real grandmother would entrust her fate to complete strangers across the world? And just for the record, Ruphina, sending this to me of all people? Given that I'm used to your tricks. And asking me to adopt your totally non existent grand-brat? You really don't know me, because if you did, you'd know that I hate kids.

Nice try, whoever you actually are. Because Ruphina the dying grandmother doesn't actually exist. And whoever's at the other end of this line of email addresses sending this exact same crap out to hundreds of thousands of random email accounts hoping that someone bites? Well, maybe you'll score a few thousand bucks in advance fees from that gullible rube. Me? No, I'm too busy imagining you getting dropped out of a helicopter. Into a not so refreshing pool of molten lava.