YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE REQUIRED
Nigerian email scam, or U.S. Treasury request? We report, u decide.
From email this evening:
Dear [your name goes here]:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion USD. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who (God willing) will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a former U.S. congressional leader and the architect of the PALIN / McCain Financial Doctrine, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. As such, you can be assured that this transaction is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully,
Minister of Treasury Paulson
This sounds like a pretty legitimate plea. If you feel so moved as to help out the Minister, please reply with requested information.
Where do I sign again?
I needed a laugh. Thanks.
what’s funny is I sent the original email to my conservative buddy in NJ and he wrote back “dude, this is a scam, don’t give the nigerians ANY personal information.”
I actually had to explain that it was a joke, which means either A) richard does a mean nigerian impersonation or B) conservatives are more thick-headed than I thought.
B, brendan, definitely B.
How about giving Savings Bonds or other Treasury securities for the holidays rather than frivolous and unnecessary specimens of consumption goods?
Ha! Better even than the Tina Fey impersonation of Palin on SNL!
Go, Rick.
Believe it or not, this email was read on NPR’s Marketplace Report tonight!! (about 1 minute before the end of the report, or scroll down the screen at the MR website for a transcript).