The Old Fake African Lawyer Shell Company Ploy

They are a horde and a pestilence that Moses wouldn't have seen coming. They creep in and out of the dark shadows of the internet, spamming our blogs and emails and sending us scams as they go along. They are the damned. The cursed. The beyond hope. They are the homo sapiens spammeritis annoyingus, commonly known as the internet scammer and spammer. The following recently came through my email. It's one I've seen before. But the accompanying name stood out.

Dear Friend,   
I am a lawyer by profession here in my country Togo--Lome west Africa, one of my clients from your country used to work with a shell development company here in the republic of TOGO Africa. My client, his wife and their only daughter were involved in an auto crash here in my country. I decided to contact you so that the $10.5M Dollars he left behind in a bank here will be transferred to your bank account immediately

Best regards,

Barrister Mark .Donald .Duck 

Chamber.

As mentioned, I've seen this one before. Short and to the point, and pretty much copy and paste, with just the name changing. In this case one Mark Donald Duck. As in the most incomprehensible character in Disney animated history, not to mention the one character in their library of characters with the deepest anger management problems. Who likes walking around in a shirt and cap, but no pants.

Yes, that Donald Duck.

Oh, right, yes. That makes sense. Are these people really that stupid? Or are they even more stupid, and not realize there's a character by that name? Could it be that in a global entertainment culture they're oblivious to the existence of the cranky duck who cannot be understood? Have they been that sheltered?

You would think considering how much noise the duck makes that it would be hard to miss him.

Nice try, numbskull. Really. I get it, you have no marketable skill for a real job, and so you do this from whatever dark corner of the world you're really in. Hoping beyond hope that someone will be dumb enough to believe you. It sure as hell isn't me. But maybe someone on that list of half a million random emails you send this out to will buy it, and promptly lose a few thousand dollars as an "administrative fee" before you disappear back down the rabbit hole.

Sigh. In an ideal world, we could load you into one of these things, and then launch you into a blazing fire.