Spam, the African Specialty

I am sometimes surprised at the effort that goes into some of the spam or information theft schemes I run into. The ones that get past the spam filter are frequently entertaining in their quality and delightful in their language.

This is likely due to many of the people writing them using a more formal English education imparted during the British colonial period. This superior understanding of the English knowledge interestingly sets them apart from legitimate offers by their very correctness of language. The expectation used to be that information thieves would be distinguishable by their bad spelling and poor grammar. That is no longer the case among at least a small sample.

My "offers" had ranged from an offer of financial aid from a king in Yorubaland, a need to quickly transfer money out of a bank in Sierra Leone, a desperate need for companionship by a very rich woman, winning a UN lottery, and a bank account of a dead miner in South Africa.

These are all quite entertaining if approached in the right way. Clearly, someone has at least been trying to craft initially plausible cover stories and doing so with a better grasp of written English than I can muster. It has gotten to the point where I expect to see errors in my departmental e-mails but open spam messages just to read the delightful English.

Are these people intended thieves? Yes. Are they enjoyable writers? Yes. It is almost sad that these people are spending more time trying to steal from me and others instead of trying to write a book.