The South African Crude Oil Scammer

There are three certainties in life- death, taxes, and internet scammers and spammers coming along to annoy you. They do so with random comments that are meaningless in our posts. They employ the old trick of sending the same email to hundreds of thousands of random email addresses, hoping to get someone gullible enough to believe them. Science calls them homo sapiens spammeritis irritatingus. We call them scammers. That's the friendly term. There are others less friendly. This came through my email recently.

Please permit me to introduce myself. My name is Jim Lamar. I earn a living in the oil industry as an independent Feasibility/Project Management Consultant to oil refineries and other oil industries in Southern African, East Africa and some parts of Asia. We are based in Johannesburg RSA. Our mandate includes identifying specific licensed crude oil export/ marketing firms and recommending these firms to the oil refineries for supply of crude oil to the refineries.

On my desk is a mandate from one of the refineries to arrange for crude oil purchase from Libya for up to 2,000,000 barrels on monthly bases for 12 calendar months.

The essence of my reaching out to you is the fact that I am in the process of building a middle man structure to mediate between the 2 parties involved before the contract is signed. You may be wondering why I cannot do it by myself right? The honest fact is that as a consultant to these oil refineries, we are not allowed to act as suppliers of crude oil to them as well, hence the reason I need a trustworthy person outside my work circle in order to maintain a discreet profile.

I wish to extend this partnership to you my friend to build a middle man structure with you, while I work from the back to guide you. Our commission/brokerage as middle persons is between $2 - $3 per barrel as case may be. So if the target of 2M barrels is met monthly we stand to share $4M - $6M every month for a span of 12 months with possible extension.

Worry less about the speedy sales as I have contacts within oil producing country's top officials for license of crude oil export/lifting to any firm I present for this business. Therefore if you can be able to handle this transaction with honesty and integrity, you should come back to me immediately for more details.

PLEASE REPLY ME THROUGH THIS MY PRIVATE EMAIL FOR MORE DETAILS:

Your urgent response is highly needed

Regards.

Jim Lamar

This nitwit spells out his scam, claiming to be in the oil and gas industry, and then having the gall to claim that he's honest. He spins a web of fortunes to be made in a shared partnership with me, what with being an outsider to his industry, with millions each month. First off, this sounds more and more illegal by the minute. Second, the overly formal language and occasional mistakes are hallmarks of the classic internet scammer. So a hard stop to this idea.

Sigh. Well, at least the oil industry is a new one. But everything else is typical internet scammer. Nice try, Jim,  or whoever you really are at the far end of a chain of emails. I just don't believe you. Maybe someone else would, but I don't.

I just envision an ideal world, where you're the guy at the end of this plank. Above shark infested waters.