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Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Spam email #4

The next spam e-mail on the list is a little, well, dated. Not only is it dated in the sense that I received this email some months ago, it is written, as I'm sure you can see, by "one of the daughters of the embattled president of Libya", viz., the daughter of Muammar Gaddafi, who at the moment is probably the opposite of "embattled" - one of the easiest things to do - and hardest, I guess - is to be in a state of non-being. Anyway, I provide the following for your entertainment procrastination.


****


I NEED YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE!

I am Miss.Ayesha Gaddafi, one of the daughters of the embattled president of Libya, I am currently residing in one of the African Countries1, unfortunately as a refugee. At the meantime,my family is the target of Western nations led by Nato2 who wants to destroy my father at all costs. Our investments and bank accounts in several countries are their targets to freeze.

I have been commissioned to contact an interested foreign investor/partner3 who will be able to take absolute control of part of the vast cash available to private account with my late brother who was killed by NATO air strike, for a possible investment in your country.

If this transaction interest you4, you don’t have to disclose it to any body because of what is going with my entire family, if the united nation happens to know this account, they will freezing it as they freeze others so keep this transaction for yourself only until we finalize it.I want to transfer this money into your account immediately for onward5 investment in your country because I don’t want the united nation to know about this account.6

Therefore if you are capable of running an establishment and can maintain the high level of secrecy required in this project7, kindly respond with the following information for details of
the project.


1. Your full names and address
2. Your private telephone and fax numbers8
3. Your private email address
4. Age and profession

Best Regard9,

Miss.Ayesha Gaddafi.

1 When capitalisation is done erratically, as it is done here and is also a phenomenon of 17th and 18th century English (one only needs to read the Preamble of the American Declaration of Independence to see what I'm talking about), it annnoys me to no end.
2 Why "she" changes from the correct writing of Nato to NATO later on is unclear. Standard journalistic practice - and therefore good English - in News Limited - although the Guardian is one prominent non-Murdoch publication to follow suit - is to use lower case in the appropriate places if the acronym is said as a word. "Nato" - the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - is one example and Opec - the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries - is another.
3 If "she" wants me to invest a large sum of money - which presumes "she" wants it back at some stage - wouldn't "she" bother to check if I have experience in the whole investing thing (which I don't)? Far out, every company expects experience in an applicant (reminding me of the old chestnut that to have experience to sell, one must gain experience first). Poor business acumen and practice.
4 Fascinating use of the subjunctive. The subjunctive is rarely used in English - although more popular in the Romance languages, especially Italian. The subjunctive is used to express hypotheticals, and works well in "if" formulations, as here. Or it could just be a typo.
5 Intriguing debate on whether it should read as "onward" or "onwards". The starting point for this debate would be to look at the Americanisation (or should that be "Americanization"?) of words, starting after the War of Independence was won in 1783. Anglo words tend to have the "s" at the end, while Americanised ones drop it off. The classic case is of "maths" (Anglo) against "math" (Americanised) as an abbreviation of "mathematics". Or, again, it could just be a typo.
6 This paragraph doesn't have the lucid feel of previous ones. The mind boggles at the drop in standard.
7 Well, that ship has sailed.
8 Is fax still a thing?
9 So "she" purports to be able to give me "vast cash" and yet she is so stingy she gives me only one "regard"? Obviously fake

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