Oh come on, we know something about Africa

Typically, as I'm sure you all know, an African scam e-mail purports to be from an assistant or relative of an obscure African leader, which lends it some appearance of legitimacy while also making it impossible to confirm. But yesterday, I received an e-mail from supposedly the personal assistant to Charles Taylor, a man accused of war crimes who probably came pretty close to being assassinated by America -- or, as the e-mail writer innocently explains, he "recently stepped down" from his post. Come on, African scammer: The only way you could have chosen a more obvious former African leader is if you claimed to work for Nelson Mandela.

Here's the e-mail:

From: "Mr. Charles Taylor,"
Reply-To: kenanene@z6.com
To: jason feifer
Subject: Let do this business as partners (reply)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 13:48:13 +0400

Very important for business men and women

I am mr. Ken Anene, the personal assistant to Mr. Charles Taylor, formaer president of Liberia. He has recently stepped down and is presently in asylum
in Nigeria. Dear friend we need your assistance in transferring some of the money derived from Gold excesses in to your account, because the government is making a plans to seize all his assets. for that i have been mandated to
deal with anyone who offers assistance to have this fund transfarred to his account oversea The amount is USD$21 million, In a security firm abroad. all that is needed is for he to instruct the company to transfer the funds to your account , i will remunerate you with 25% of the total fund transferred to your vital bank account as compensation for your assistance, 5% will be set aside to take care of your expenses we may inure during the transaction ,

To indicate your interest kindly provide me your direct phone and Fax numbers and all relevant information for me be contacting and to let you know the roles you will play in making this transaction successful.

All the legal information concerning this money will be sent to you as soon as we agree together We all have been confined only to calabar and all our calls are monitored so i will use all available contact to get you all the needed information.

Thanks for your co-operation

Mr. Ken Anene.

So, what kind of person will respond to this e-mail? Well, presumably people who respond to e-mails noting obscure African leaders are greedy bastards looking for riches they don't deserve. With this e-mail, it's people who know damn well the money they're being recruited to claim is pure blood money, and in direct odds with American foreign policy. I guess whoever gets caught up in this scam pretty much deserves what's coming to them.

Posted by Jason Feifer at December 22, 2004 10:21 AM