Tales Of A Bank Manager And Scammer

 

There will never be an end to them. They plague our email accounts and our blogs with get rich quick scams and comments that have nothing to do with the subject matter. They send us stories and tall tale claims that they hope will garner them the attention of a sucker. I speak, of course, of that vile horde of useless wastes of oxygen we call homo sapiens spammeritis irritatingus. Also known as internet scammers and spammers. This pile of garbage came through my email recently.

Hello my Friend .  

My name is Mrs .Greatness K. Tetteh . I am the regional manager of Standard Chartered Bank .

I write you this proposal in good faith, I am a woman of peace. I have packaged a financial transaction that will benefit you and I. As the regional manager of the Standard Chartered Bank it is my duty to send in a financial report to my head office in the capital city Accra at the end of each business year.

In the course of the year 2014 business report, I discovered that my branch in which I am the manager made Three Million Seven hundred and thirty thousand United state Dollars ($3,730,000.00) which my head office isn't aware of and will never be aware of. I have placed these funds on what we call ESCROW CALL ACCOUNT with no beneficiary. As an officer of this bank I cannot be directly connected to this money, so my aim of contacting you is to assist me receive this money through VISA CARD and get 35% of the total funds as commission.

There are practically no risks involved, Because, You will receive it through VISA CARD and all I need from you is to claim as the original depositor of these funds who made the deposit with my branch so that my head office can approve the funds for you to receive the VISA CARD 

Thanking you in advance for your kind and urgent response, more so for keeping our proposal to yourself.  Therefore if you are interested to work with me just comply with your information so that I can program it to Our Data Base as the beneficiary of the funds . also to send you the application letter to apply  .

FULL NAME...........

ADDRESS.............

AGE.................

SEX.................

OCCUPATION..........

MARITAL STATUS.....

TELEPHONE/FAX NUMBER......

Best regards,

Mrs .  Greatness K. Tetteh

Oh, wonderful. Now the scammers are calling themselves by a fake name that isn't even a name. Because if Greatness is a name, this is the first time I've heard it used. She, he, or it starts off by saying "my friend". I am not your friend. I have enough friends, and don't want any more. My friends don't waste my time with this crap. She identifies herself as Mrs. Greatness K. Tettah, a regional manager of Standard Chartered Bank (oh, sure), and then proposes a scheme of pilfering money from her bank with my assistance (what could possibly go wrong?). 

The standard tell tales of the scammer are there. Overly formal language and a few mistakes here and there. The capitalization of words that don't need it. The "hush hush, trust me, this is a good deal" tone of the whole thing. But it's not true. Random bankers do not reach out to complete strangers halfway around the world to help them steal from their own bank, if this story were true, which it is not. The truth of this is that this person is scamming, with a really dumb fake name. And maybe someone in that list of a half million random emails will be gullible enough to believe it.

I can't say I'm surprised. I sometimes think that writing about these in a post draws them out. I can tell you that I've had recent comments from people about a certain Cancer Widow who first spewed her tale of "I'm dying in a few months" in an email to me years ago, and who is still sending the exact same word for word email to them as well. That's impressive for someone who claimed to be on death's door a decade ago.

Oh well. They'll never learn, never stop, and never find an honest way of making a living. 

All we can do is ridicule them until they cease wasting oxygen.

Santa Claus Versus The Abominable Eggnog

It is Christmas Eve (bah, humbug!). I have an image blog for the occasion. Enjoy! 

If It Should Please The Court

The following is a random line of thought, a closing argument of sorts. 

Incidentally, hiring me as your attorney would be a mistake. If I was licensed, that is.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have seen much throughout this trial. There has been a lot of muckraking and abuse of my client's good name. The prosecution has made points about video evidence and fingerprints and eye witnesses and this and that. But the sad fact is that this trial should not have even happened in the first place.

We are not disputing that a crime took place. We are not disputing that at all. We have acknowledged, reluctantly, my client's criminal past. Yes, it is true, he comes from a troubled background. Yes, he has spent the last twenty years in and out of prison on various charges. Everything from armed robbery to forged checks to drug dealing to littering.

We acknowledge all of that. We cannot dispute that these things happened. But one of the fundamental rights of a defendant is the right to defend themselves, is it not? It is, right, Your Honor? Forget I said that.

The point is that this trial should not have proceeded. It was unjust. A violation of legal principle in every way one can imagine.

Because my client is dead.

Okay, fine, I get it. We live in Alabama, where legislators seem to take a dim view of defendant rights. But surely the right of a defendant to defend themselves is fundamental to a just society. But my client is unable to. Because he's deceased. Assumed room temperature. Gone to the great beyond, depending on what one might have a view of on the afterlife, if any at all. 

The point is, he's dead. He died in a jail cell after getting arrested for stealing a bike, of all things.

And the simple fact is, we don't know what happened. Was it suicide, because he had multiple other charges against him outstanding? Was it a health thing, since he had a twenty five year addiction to recreational drugs? Was it running into the wrong person in jail?

We just don't know. But the point is, my client was not able to participate in preparing for his own trial. Because he was dead. And instead of having the simple decency to just chalk it up to 'defendant deceased, no further case' and release my client's body to his family for burial, the prosecution got a court order to have him embalmed so he could sit through the trial.

I ask, ladies and gentlemen, is this fair? The man is dead. This is demeaning to his family. It is demeaning to the very concept of justice. It is the very essence of wrong.

I have asked myself for months, why? What is his motive? Not my client, I can't ask him that, because he's dead. No, I refer to my colleague in the district attorney's office. I've known Mr. Sedgwick for years, and always thought him to be a reasonable man. Why try to railroad a man who's beyond justice? Why waste the court's time on a farce that will surely be overturned on appeal, because rest assured, I'm taking this all the way to the Supreme Court if I have to. 

Well, I figured it out. I know why he's been so gung-ho about this.

Ladies and gentlemen, this took a lot of digging. You see, my client went to school with Mr. Sedgwick when they were children. Children are children, sometimes they're good, sometimes they behave badly. But you see, one day in grade one, my client tripped Mr. Sedgwick, who fell into a mud puddle, and laughed at him. I only found out about this last night, incidentally. The point is, the prosecution has been holding onto a grudge for decades and is being petulant about something that happened so long ago that he's turned his back on his very duties as a lawyer. Instead, he uses justice to nurse an old grudge.

And I say, it's wrong. Just plain wrong. Now earlier on, I did mention my client's good name. Well, that's embellishing a bit, because he didn't really have a good name. But the point is, you can't pervert justice to settle old scores with someone who's already dead. Does that make sense to you? Because it doesn't to me. 

I expect Mr. Sedgwick was hoping on having my client buried in a penitentiary yard for all time. Note his facial expression, ladies and gentlemen. The flared nostrils and the flustered, irritated expression. He didn't want you knowing about the mud puddle incident.

I'm not asking you to condone my client. He's beyond that anyway. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am asking you to use your common sense. It does not make sense to put a dead body on trial. Especially for something as trivial as the theft of a bike. I urge you to remember that in your deliberations. To bring back a verdict of not guilty, regardless of the weight of the evidence. To be compassionate to the man's family and give them closure and let him have the peace he couldn't find in life.

And to tell the prosecution that he can go jump off a cliff. 

Thank you."