Welcome to Nowhere

And I’ve been known to get some pretty decent random, and stupid, emails. I got this one last Wednesday.

From: spam@email.address.removed
Date: Wed 11/18/2009 10:12 AM
to: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: RE: SHIPMENT AUTHENTICATION REQUIRED

Head Office Branch
Plot 84, Ajose Adeogun Street
Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.

RE:YOUR PAYMENT NOTIFICATION
From:Dr Paul Smith.
Remittance Manager.
Zenith Bank Of Nigeria.
Attention:Beneficiary

This is to officially inform you that we have verified your contact file presently in our database, as regards your African Union (AU)solidarity fund that was awarded to you upon been one of the lucky Beneficiary in its last draw on the 9th of November 2009.
This award is funded by the African Union( AU) so as to strengthen tires between Africa and the rest of the world with particular reference to Nigeria.
We have discovered you have not received your payment due to your lack of co-operation and not fulfilling the obligations giving to you in respect to your contract payment.
Secondly, you are hereby advised to stop dealing with some non-officials in the bank as this is an illegal act and will have to stop if you so wish to receive your payment immediately. After the board meeting held at our headquarters, we have resolved in finding a solution to this problem, and as you may know, we have arranged your payment through our SWIFT CARD PAYMENT CENTRE in Europe, America,Africa and Asia Pacific, which is the instruction given by our president, ALAHAJI USMAN AMIR YARADUA (GCFR) Federal Republic of Nigeria.

This card center will send you an ATM CARD which you will use to withdraw your money totaling to a tune of $7.000.000.00 (Seven Million Dollars) in an ATM MACHINE in any part of the world, but the maximum is ($2,000) per transaction. So, if you like to receive your fund this way,reply to this office immediately for the issuing of your (ATM) CARD with the below Information.

(1) Name:
(2) Address:
(3) Phone:
(4) Age:

Alternatively, you can come down to the header address to claim your fund with the original notification mail that will be sent to you shortly.
We shall be expecting to receive your information you have to stop any further communication with anybody or office apart from this office of the presidency.
On this regards, do not hesitate to contact me for more details and direction, and also please do update me with any new development.
Thanks for your co-operation.

Best Regards,

Dr Paul Smith
Remittance Manager
Zenith Bank Of Nigeria.

Note: Because of impostors, we hereby issue you with our code of conduct, which is (202) so you have to indicate this code when contacting or emailing this CARD CENTER and remember that there is a $100 charges for openning your non-residence and we would advise you not to reply to these e-mail if you do not have the said fee for openning your non-residence account.

Were this email actually legitimate, and were I actually entitled to any amount of money, and were it in fact due to be coming to me ASAP from some overseas establishment, I doubt they’d be sending me a poorly written email about it. But, since neither of those “if”s appear to be true, and the email in question looks as though a 4th grader had a crack at writing it, it gets the spammer stupidity award for November, 2009. Sometimes, 419 scams amuse the royal hell out of me. But just sometimes.

Also: If anyone *does* actually want to send me 7 million dollars, I won’t say no. Just don’t tell me via email.