To Scam A Scammer (An Ongoing Exercise)

There's a sucker born every minute.

Some (in)famous person, who's name is escaping me just now, so said. His book of wisdom is obviously mandatory reading in Nigeria.

I've been duelling, if you will, with Nigerian email scamsters for going on 4 years now. I've highlighted a few of those counterscams on my website (example: http://www.outofthinair.homestead.com/419hatch.html), when they've achieved maximum absurdity and I've succeeded in (a) getting them to waste time and resources, as well as (b) made them mad enough to 'threaten' me. Of course, the 'me' they're threatening is one of my aliases, designed specifically for this 'game'. Currently, my scamster of note thinks he's dealing with Dr. U. R. Phulovit, a technician at the International Crustacean Obedience Training Institute in Vaduz, Liechtenstein.

Don't laugh; they even have a website (well, they used to, until May '07)

This one started when the scamster -- a Mr. Bonnet Wealth (snort) -- and another scamster began writing to me on the same day. I played them off against one another, telling the other that the one was accusing them of being fraudulent. Wealth insisted he was 'real' and the other was a 'bad person who wanted to steal me blonde'....yep, that's what he really said LOL.

So I played along with Wealth, whilst he laid out his effort to give me the business (my words): he knew of an account by a since-dead American engineer who had left something like 32 Million US dollars in an account when he died; and if I'd stand in as the dead 'Merican's next of kin -- and Wealth could make this happen with the help of a 'barrister' in Nigeria -- he'd give me 25% of the account for my help.

Righhhhht.

With ever worse-written emails, Wealth assured me that we were "on the limelight of succeed", and that I need only contact his bannister (my words) for details on procuring the documents to make it 'legal'. And that's where the trap was ready to spring: his 'bannister' wanted me to send him "25,200 Euros" for his fees and document procurement.

Which of course, had I been stupid enough to actually do, that would have been the last I would have heard from the bannister or Wealth.

So I had a 'Net pal (who's a whiz with Photoshop) design me a Euro, especially for this occasion. And I emailed the bannister two of them (for a total of 29,000 'Yurodumass', as a bonus).

He was not amused.

Then I told Wealth that his bannister was corrupt, crooked, and his mother dressed him funny, and he could not be trusted. That usually ends the scam.

But not with Bonnet: he apologized for "an untrusted leegal person", and promised to find a better one.

There's nothing like fooling a fool who thinks you're the bigger one ;-)

So that's where we stand: he's found me a new bannister -- a more expensive one (this one wants 45,000 Euros, and half of it up front).

I'll send him his 'payment' on Sunday. Let you know how it goes from there.

Aren't I a stinker?

Voting For Dildough

The state of Colorado is a hoot. Especially when they're begging voters for more of our money so they can spend it for, in the words of my particular state senator, "the common good".

Righhhhht.

Like many states, Colorado was hit hard by 9/11 and what followed. Unlike some harder-hit states, like Califorlornia, Colorado had a fiscally responsible Republican governor, a Republican-controlled state house/senate, and the taxpayer-friendly Tabor Amendment, that required the state to send back to taxpayers excess revenues the state didn't find a way to spend. So at least initially, the pain was minor.

But the Democrats -- doing their damnest to feel someone's pain -- howled like stuck piggy banks, demanding steps be taken to increase spending on everything and anything.

Fools that they are (I don't include myself, having voted no on it), the voters of Colorado responded in 2002 with Amendment 23, which put educational spending on autopilot for a number of years, coinciding with an economic downturn in the state. Bigger fools that they are (I don't include myself, having voted for fiscally responsible candidates), the voters of Colorado responded in 2004 by turning control of the state house/senate over to the spend-happy Democrats.

What follows was preDICTable and ludicrous: Referendum C and D. On the November 2005 ballot is a plan whereby, with voter approval, the state will cease refunding Tabor Amendment overtaxation to the taxpayers, and will keep it for "at least" five years, spending it on "roads, education and health care". Without it, the doomsayers say that budget shortfalls will be in the "billions" of dollars, and that the most vulnerable will suffer.

Of course, opponents of the two referenda note, with alarm and concern, that once government gets the extra money and spends in on a plethora of old and new programs, they aren't going to want to give it back in five years. Or ten . Or ever.

I recently had an email exchange with my state senator on this subject: I insisted that what C and D amounted to was a huge tax increase, and I insisted that the current revenues being collected be better spent; she responded with an arrogant "you obviously have no idea about the complexities of state government, and how the monies are necessary for the common good".

Righhhht.

This week, two examples (of many) of what my state senator considers "for the common good" have hit the proponents of Referendum C and D, right between their fans: how the state of Colorado spent $500,000 taxpayer dollars on liquor for the poor, underfunded University of Colorado, and how the state's Council of the Arts spent $5,000 on an art work consisting of twelve dildos on hooks.

A budget shortfall 'crisis' demands we let the state keep our overtaxation, so we can provide booze to college students and dildos for art?

And that's only the beginning, with Democrats hoping to -- with voter approval -- stifle Tabor and get a stranglehold on taxpayer monies, for necessary state expenditures like dildonic artwork, condoms for junior high students and alcohol for the party animals at CU.

I can only hope that more rational Coloradans than transplanted, liberal-to-the-point-of-dumb-as-tree-stump Califorlornians are registered to vote in November, and show up to shoot this referendumb dead at the ballot box.

Otherwise, I'm gonna need one of those junior high condoms, to protect myself from the tax dildo the Democrats will be bending me over with.

And they think a skunk stinks?




Later 2005 update: this same state senator from Colorado -- about three months after our email exchange -- was forced to resign her seat from the Colorado Senate, having been caught in a scandal involving 'forcing' certain entities to fund her re-election campaign, or face the threat of funding cut-offs. I sent her a follow-up email when the scandal broke, thanking her for educating me on what Democrats consider "the common good". LOL.

Fourth of July -- What It Means?

Like most holidays, the 4th of July holiday weekend has a plethora of meanings to a cornucopia of folks. We're a long way from what it meant on July 4, 1776. Or are we?

A local radio station is taking the day to air "Letters Home", letters from current-day military personnel in the Iraq/Afghanistan war zones, to friends and loved ones, to highlight and underscore the human element of war and independence.

Not to be outdone -- and more familiar in neighborhoods across the country -- my neighbors in this particular complex are all geared to blow the place up, with tons of legal and illegal fireworks (the illegal stuff is legal in Wyoming, a couple hours' north, with I-25 and US 287 serving as the modern-day Ho Chi Minh Trail of things that sail, spark and 'splode), delighting kids, annoying neighbors and local authorities, and terrifying pets and causing local flying life to sit gingerly and alertly on their perches.

And holiday travellers throng to the great outdoors in droves: as can be witnessed on the parking lot status of I-70 west of Denver, between Genessee and Idaho Springs. It's a wonder some drivers don't just pull over and pitch their tents right where they're stuck. Personally, I'm convinced that's what's causing the jam, since I don't travel to the source of it.

Nor do I have the time to. 'Cuz my travel is for 'celebrating' the 4th at work. Working. Watching others find their own ways and reasons to celebrate the 4th. And paying those pesky bills. Danged nuisances, but I digress.

But amidst all of that, I'll keep a brain cell or two thinking about those who are doing the dirty and good fight of sustaining the seminal foundation of independence we so take for granted in the New Millennium: defending us on the far frontier. And in so doing, making a noble effort -- whatever comes of it in the end -- to allow foreign persons, ignorant of what 'freedom' and 'independence' is in actuality -- a taste of something worth fighting to have, and for.