Jewish World Review July 9, 2003 / 9 Tamuz, 5763

Barry Lank

Barry Lank
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Consumer Reports


A literary critique of Nigerian scam letters


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Well, it's happened. You know those Nigerian scam e-mails? The ones in which some stranger in a foreign country wants to store money in your bank account?

They're becoming their own literary genre.

A Web site called Scamorama has collected what looks like hundreds of these letters. And the Federal Trade Commission has helpfully outlined the formula for them:

Someone claiming to be a government official or a bank manager or a deposed official or the survivor of some dictator needs to remove millions of dollars from some legal limbo. But somehow, the money never makes it into your account, and in the meantime, you've told the letter writer our bank account and passport numbers, and maybe you've sent him money.

Sometimes, he'll even ask you to visit his home country. The U.S. State Department reports that some people who accept such hospitality have been hit in the head a bunch of times and have woken up with a less than comfortable amount of the money they brought with them.

The FTC says this bunco scheme has been around for decades. In its old form — known as "the Spanish prisoner" — it even dates back centuries. But until recently, most of us never saw it. People once had to do it by mail, which cost labor to type and postage to send, so marks were targeted sparingly. But now, tens of thousands of notes can go out on e-mail. Everyone gets to see and appreciate these peculiar examples of genre fiction. The FTC says some people are getting a dozen a day.

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Despite the formula, each note must be different. You'd get suspicious if you received the same "absolutely confidential" sob story twice under a different name. But even slight variables help you rationalize that "this one is legitimate. It isn't from Nigeria, it's from Amsterdam. And they're not asking me to send money for the purchase of a hot-air balloon. They simply have my bank numbers and are steadily bleeding my account while I sleep. So you see, I'm going to be unimaginably rich."

And as with any other kind of fiction, some are better written than others.

Zimmy Mabo, for example, just cannot write a good scam letter. He spends the first hundred words of his story "Foreign co-op" introducing himself and asking the reader to keep quiet. Only then does he mention the money — a mere $8.5 million — and only later still does he explain that he got it by overcharging for contract work. By then, we've moved on to other, more compelling attempts to rip us off.

Understand, I'm criticizing him only as a writer, not as a person. Perhaps he gives to charities, asks for insurance cards before mugging his victims and is unfailingly pleasant to his crack dealer. But his letter is a dry, senseless mess with virtually no plot development.

John Mbuga — though also not a great story teller — at least has a journalist's facility with the inverted pyramid structure: Put the most important fact first, the second most important fact second and so forth. "We want to transfer to overseas ($142,000,000 USD)," begins his short essay, "Assistance." Our interest is piqued. Next, he says he's looking for a bank account, then explains that the money comes from an unclaimed savings fund. The rest is instructions. You walk away saying "Wow, that is a really well organized scam letter. This guy could teach."

Muhammed Abacha, however, writes a fraudulent e-mail that you can't put down. His latest opus, "I Truly Need Your Help Please," begins with intrigue and death. He is "the son of the late military head of state General Sani Abacha, who died mysteriously on the 8th of June, 1998." Next come the civilian overthrow of military leaders, the author being held in detention and hundreds of millions of dollars stashed in foreign accounts around the world. Abacha is the Tom Clancy of e-mail scam letter writers.

That's what a good artist does. He gets the reader to say, "I, too, could write such a scam letter — if I were a genius."



JWR contributor Barry Lank is an editorial writer and humor columnist based at the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, NJ. Comment by clicking here.

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© 2002, Barry Lank