Job Placement For Scammers

As y'all know, I take an almost perverse delight in screwing with and pissing off email scammers. It's been something of a quest, even a crusade*, for going on 9 years. The scam emails aren't abating.

And neither is my scambaiting.

But not everyone finds what I do to be funny, or even laudable. In a rogue email not terribly long ago, I was accused by an anonymous emailer of being "mean-spirited and unjust" to the scammers.

"When" the emailer demanded to know, "have you ever tried to reach out to and help them? You just assume they're bad people doing bad things. Did you ever stop to think that maybe this is the only way they have to feed their families?"

I sent back a rather characteristic retort for me, and that was the end of the exchange ("Are you a gullible moron by birth or choice?"). But like an itch I couldn't scratch, the email bothered me. Maybe they're scammers because this is the only way they have to make ends meet. Maybe they're decent people, that in slightly different circumstances, would be just like my neighbors next door. Real pricks.

Okay, maybe that wasn't such a good comparison.

Feeling about as philosophical about it as a cosmic enema, I started to scan the veritable avalanche of emails I've got coming in right now, looking for something unique, something different, something that might offer me a chance to offer a hand up to a troubled scammer, and perhaps show him or her some compassion, an enlightened path, and show a better side of da Skunk.

And by Sam Horsefeathers, I think I found one.

I won't belabor you with the entire email (it ran two tortured pages), but here's the gist of it: from a Ms Zenab Damani (zenabdamani01@yahoo.fr) "i am a medical student 23 year old and i held from Republic of Sudan the daughter of late Mr, Ali Damani, the owner of Brisco car dealer company, at the Khartoum in Sudan (or is that a cartoon sedan...I'm sorry, I'm supposed to be compassionate and helpful here, so I continue with her gist). He was killed alongside with my beloved mother and our family house by the rebels during the last crisis in my country when Janjaweed militia come to our house (the rebels killed the house, too? Those bastards). i come to you becuse of the maltreatment which i am receive from my step mother house (have you noticed how the houses can be as mean as some of the people in Sudan? Oops...shame on me, I wasn't going to be this way, and she continues). Lucky to me i find important documents my father hide away that allow me escape to Burkina Faso (why did I know that Burkina Faso was going to come up sooner or later? But dagnabbit, I promised not to hold that agin' her, and she goes on). i am stay now in mission camp in Burkina Faso where i am seek for long term relation with a trustworth person of good credental and caracter. i need you for this i select, to help me invest the $9.2 million USD my late father deposit secretive before his die at hands of militia.

She goes on to pledge that once I have helped her, she'll settle down in my country at my side, and serve my wishes and needs for eternal thanks, yada..yada..yada.

Sorry...I'm having a real battle with my cynicism here. But to show that anonymous emailer that I'm not all jerk -- just 98% -- I decide to treat this one different. I will offer her help, but not simply the kind that brings her over here to set her up in semi-indentured servitude (kind of outlawed by our 13th Amendment); I will offer her a chance to find a vocation, and a profitable one at that, and without her having to cross an ocean to get it. She need only go back home, and a little further east therefrom.

Witness this charitable act of holding a job fair right here, just for her:

Ms. Zenab Damani,

Let me get this straight: you are a 23 year old medical student, female, and a refugee from Sudan, right?

My child, you go about this all wrong. Help is within the very continent you stand upon, and right next door to your long-suffering Sudan.

Here, on the sunny Somali coast, life is as treasured as any place on Earth. But here, we actively seek the treasure, and like those wayfaring buccaneers of old, we take from the rich and give to the poor, with a yo-ho-ho on a dead man's chest with a bottle of rum, or some modern-day equivalent, if you know what I mean. If you don't, we'll happily teach you.

Allow me to introduce myself: I am Commander Mooch Alot, aide-de-camp to His Excellency, Admiral Unga Zanga Banga Boo, commanding the Somali Aquatic Wealth Transfer Services Syndicate. Perhaps you've heard of us? We run a very secure, profitable enterprise from the sanctuary of Somalia's east coast, and for those who've joined our budding enterprise, a profitable career can be had. We are Equal Employment Opportunity-committed, and are in equal need of men and women. We offer flex hours, medical, dental and vision plans, a 401k, vacation and sick time accrual, as well as whole term life insurance. Our positions are many and varied, and while we prefer experience, we are very open to on-the-job training.

With your youth and medical training, you would have opportunities in our universal health care field, as well as with our piratical entertainment services, when 'the boyz' have returned with a successful plunder, and need some of that companionship that only a woman can offer to a "bring home the bacon" pira...er...wealth transfer engineer.

Express your willingness to sign on the dotted line and swear fidelity to the Somali Wealth Transfer Services Syndicate, and we'll pay your way to our administrative processing and training enclave (we can't tell you where it is now, in case those pesky warships and remote drones from the USN and other navies try to sniff it out).

My dear, if you've dreamt of a career of travel, adventure, intrigue, wealth, and hot pig sex with drunken sailors, then apply today to the Somali Wealth Transfer Services Syndicate!

Your future security and serenity awaits you!

Sincerely,

Commander Mooch Alot,

Aide-de-Camp to Admiral Unga Zanga Banga Boo

CEO, Somali Wealth Transfer Services Syndicate, LLC

Listed on the Dow Jones Industrial (and some less desired places)

There now, see? I can be helpful and enlightening, and offer a hand up to a needy 23 year old scammer. Heck, I even threw in free health care AND vacation time. And Mr/Ms Anonymous has the temerity to call me "mean-spirited and unjust"?

Sadly, my effort to be a more compassionate person to a scammer went phfffft, when she -- or her handler -- replied thus:

who are you think i am to be so stupd as that. you not funny asshol. you not rite me agan.

See? Some people genuinely don't want a hand up. They just want to be goat-smelling, egg-sucking, lower-than-snail-spit scammers and wealth transfer recipients. But that's easier for me to deal with. Trying to be compassionate and genuinely concerned about scammers gets on my conservative nerves ;-)

* a politically incorrect word I am told by the ACLU, in deference to our Islamofascist friends with tender sensibilities and exploding underwear. Since I think the ACLU butt-boinks dead rodents, I don't care ;-)