Scammers Past and Present

Proof that a scam has no effective shelf life.

Back in '08, a Muhamed Bello was attempting to scam me with the usual overseas inheritance fund nonsense.

As in previous scambaits, I was playing the role of Jerome "Curly" Howard, aka Curly of the Three Stooges.  The real Curly died in 1952, and I was playing him from his home since then, a cemetery in Los Angeles.

The tactic had freaked out a couple other scammers who were none to amused to find that they were communicating with the 'dead'. 

Anyway, Bello had just finished telling my character what was needed to proceed, and "Curly" had just responded back with his residential address (the street address and phone number to the cemetery), and there the matter rested, late in 2008.

See what I just did there?  Nyuk.

At least, there it rested until two weeks ago.

Here is a recap of the last exchange I – as "Curly" – and Bello had back in ‘08:

　
Dear Jerome,
Thanks for your kindness to me towards this transaction, I want you to assure me of your capability of handling this transfer with trust by giving me the following information about yourself:

1.Your name in Full:
2.Your House Address :
3.Your Occupation :
4.Your Age :
5.Your direct phone number 6)Your passport photo so that it can help me to locate you when the fund will be transfer into your account you are going to provide to the bank.
7)Are you assuring me that you will not sit on this fund when it hits into the account that you are going to provide to the bank???

I know that you will not disappoint me when this money enters your account, I have all my hope of life survival with my family in this transaction. We must hurry up with this transaction so that our bank and the government shall not claim and inherit this money because it has over-stayed. After the bank have approve your application as next of kin to our late customer I will fly down your country for investment with my own share but I will advise you to keep this transaction as a top secret because no body again knows about it except you and I. For more information you can contact me on phone (+226 78 78 46 16) so that we can talk. Thanks, Muhamed Bello.

How I had Jerome Curly Howard respond four years ago was thus:

　
Dear Bellow,
Kindness is a key ingredient in any interaction, in my book of afterlife.
Now, to answer your questions:
1. Jerome Curly Howard
2. 4334 Whittier Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90023
3. Deceased comedian, retired
4. 48
5. 1-213-235-2335
6. I'll send you my driver's license with photo.
7. Yes, you have my assurance I'll not sit on the funds once transferred.
I await your affirmation.

　Affirmation that never came...until a couple weeks ago, four years later. Here’s Bello’s gambit:
　
Dear Jerome Curly Howard,I am happy to inform you about my success in getting that fund Now transferred.
I thank you for your great effort to our unfinished transfer of fund into your account that time due to one reason or the other best known to you. But I want to inform you that I have successfully transferred the fund into my new partner's account in Vietnam, who was eventually, capable of assisting me in this great venture. Due to your effort, sincerity, courage and trust worthiness you showed during the course of the transaction. I am compensating you and show my gratitude to you with the sum of $500 000.00 dollars. Now contact MONEY GRAM AGENT IN BURKINA FASO, contact person is Dr.Williams Ahmed ask him to send you the total sum of $500,000.00 which I deposited in an account in with United Bank Of Africa (UBA) for your compensation for all the past efforts and attempts to assist me in this matter. I appreciated your efforts at that time very much. so feel free and get in touched with him and pick up the total sum of $500.000.00 to send the amount to you.
Please, contact Dr.Williams Ahmed, to issue you the payment information text question and answer so that you can pick up the amount below email is his email address (moneygram-wire@live.com) forward him your Telephone number and address so that he will be sure

　
Whether it is the same scammer writing four years later, trying to re-ignite an old scam, or another one making use of internet café sharing, I don’t know or care; I just decide to introduce the new entrant here – Dr. Williams Ahmed – to a dose of email editing, as my character from four years ago would have perhaps wanted it:
　
　
　
From: muhamed bello <muhamed_bello020@yahoo.fr>To: Jerome C. Curly Howard deadcomedianburied@homeofpeace.com
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 12:44 PM
Subject: YOUR CONTACT GRAM

Dear Jerome Curly Howard ,

　
I am happy to inform you about my success in getting that fund Now transferred. Yeah, I know..it took me four f**king years to get it done. What the f**k, dude...I'm an uneducated doof mugu from a Third World country, okay?


I thank you for your great effort to our unfinished transfer of fund into your account that time due to one reason or the other best known to you. But I just learned by way of internet search that you are dead, and have been since 1952. This cause me great curiosity as to how you contact me four years ago, if this is so.


Of course, with technology like it is, having a WIFI retrofitted into your crypt is quite doable and affordable now, I must have to think this so. But...how do you type, if after 60 years, you weared your fingers to the bone?


Again, this is the most of curious to me, as I am sure it would be to you if you can answer this email four years later than when I last had speaks with you.   Am I making the sense here? Good. Now, to business.

I want to inform you that I have successfully transferred the fund into my new partner's account in Vietnam; he's dead too, like you, though he bought it during a B-52 concert because he dove for cover and hit his head on one of the group's cast iron nut cup. So now you both are dead, and I feel a bit strange about this business, yes?

Anyway, I have put aside for you the sum of $500 000.00 dollars.

Now contact MONEY GRAM AGENT IN BURKINA FASO, contact person is Dr.Williams Ahmed ask him to send you the total sum of $500,000.00 which I deposited in an account in with United Bank Of Africa (UBA) for your compensation for all the past efforts and attempts to assist me in this matter. It would be best if you don't tell Dr. Williams Ahmed that you're dead; he's very superstitious, and might have a Tanzanian Rectal Cramp suddenly stricken him, which would make three of you in this deal dead, making me the only survivor. Maybe I could win next season's Survivor show, yes?

Please, contact Dr.Williams Ahmed, but do NOT tell him that you are dead okay? He wets himself easily, and a Tanzanian Rectal Cramp would surely do him in. Here is his email address (moneygram-wire@live.com) forward him your Telephone number and address so that he will be sure Regard,
Mr.Muhamed Bello


　
Ol’ Muhamed wouldn’t bother replying to any of this. But new Dr. Williams Ahmed did:

　
you dead stuff not real stop this stupid now or you not get mony gram.


　I couldn’t resist:

　
Dr. Williams Ahmed...you have made a terrible mistake: you have denied an actual astral bridging from the Third Astral Plane, to your Earthly level. You have denigrated the dead. You have blasphemized the afterlife.
You will be punished by all the aroused spirits of Darkness.
It is written...so shall it be, as the voodoo that we do so well is now a shadow to your every step, your every breath, your every last thought, action, deed. To you and yours, hereafter.　
Perhaps...just perhaps...he wet himself:

　
stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

　It is too late for you. It is done. The spirits of Darkness are your eternal shadow. Yeah buddy.

　Perhaps one day, in another four years or so, Muhamed Bello will let me know if Dr. Williams Ahmed actually wet himself or not....

Will You Accept A Collect Call From The Dead?

*From the Out of (cyber) Thin Air website archives -- originally released 10/96*

Doesn't that sound like the kind of question fittingly asked on All Hallows' Eve? Or if you're into things like the paranormal and reincarnation, perhaps you're one of those who would love to receive such a call.

The afterworld. Life beyond the grave. The supernatural. Subjects that inspire 'spirited' debate among theologians, paranormal researchers, astrologists and cynics. From 'back from the dead' experiences to haunted houses, reports of encounters with supernatural entities tend to have their supporters and their detractors. Watered down, those who 'believe', versus those who demand undeniable, absolute proof.

Perhaps maybe we finally have some?

From the archives of the Denver Post (fittingly enough the Halloween edition in 1995) comes an article by Bill Briggs entitled, In Touch With The Great Beyond. The story centers on a group of crackpo...uh...remarkable researchers and their work in the field of communications with the spirit world.

And vice versa.

One researcher interviewed by Briggs -- Mark Macy -- even has a book out, Conversations Beyond The Light (Griffin Books). In the book and article, Macy tells an incredib(ul)le story of a Latvian psychologist, one Konstantin Raudive, and his research into contacting and communicating with the dead. Raudive insists that the dead had, in fact, found a way to communicate with the living, using electronic and communications and entertainment devices we take for granted today.

Using a standard tape recorder, Raudive would find a place of quiet solitude and speak to departed friends and loved ones, asking them various questions. Later, in his lab, he would play back the tape, monitoring it for several hours, finding answers to all of his questions recorded thereon.

Raudive's research revealed that spirits need "white noise" -- like radio static -- which the spirits are able to "modulate into voice patterns strong enough to be captured on audio tape". Allegedly, Raudive collected over 75,000 voices in his years of research.

Macy then relates a telephone call he received from Raudive in 1994. As Macy tells it, he answered the phone and heard the distinctive voice of Raudive (whom he'd heard on audiotape many times, studying Raudive's work). Raudive told him "This is Konstantin Raudive. This is the first contact you get from us. We have succeeded in establishing a new bridge to the States. You are the first to be contacted by this means".

And with that, Macy says, the phone line went dead.

Apparently, literally: Konstantin Raudive died in 1974.

Since 1991, Macy claims to have been investigating and researching what is referred to as ITC: instrumental transcommunication. Through this means, Macy claims that he and other researchers have had 'conversations' with spirit beings who have learned how to use technology "on the other side", and have it communicate with our own modern-day technology.

Among the things Macy claims to have learned from the other side, is the existence of a place called Marduk -- a place we might refer to as Heaven. Marduk is a planet with three suns that has nothing to do with Fred MacMurray, located in the Third Astral plane, another physical dimension that shares space with our own. And life on Marduk is better than any Club Med: residents of Marduk average the age of 30 (as we measure it here). Physical anomalies as we know them don't exist there; but all of the human pleasures do, including sex.

In short, Kevin Costner, it isn't Heaven or Iowa: it's Marduk.

To believers, it sounds awesome; to skeptics, "yeah, whatever".

As for me, I'm open to reasoned arguments about almost anything except for the viability of sauer kraut as edible and Bill Clinton being ethical; but I found the claims by Macy to be a bit much to accept at face value. So first, I attended an ITC event at a local hotel last November 1995; interesting, but not totally convincing.

So I followed up with a phone call to Mr. Macy (1-900-SPIRITD...not really the number, but it fit the theme) to get more information. The following is a transcript of the conversation I had with one of Mr. Macy's associates (herein referred to as PC, Person Contacted):

PC: Hello?

Me: I'm calling to speak to Mr. Macy. Is he available?

PC: I'm sorry, Bill is not available just now. Can I help you?

Me: Perhaps you can...you are who?

PC: Albert, but you can call me Al.

Me: Fine, Al. What exactly do you do for Mr. Macy?

PC: I occasionally do research work in conjunction with Bill and his associates.

Me: So...you're pretty familiar with the work Bill and his associates do. What are your thoughts on it?

PC: It's fascinating and very illuminating, I must say. I had often pondered such things myself years ago, but never got around to spending much quality time on it. Now I have the liberty to do so, and I am happy to say I'm learning more and more.

Me: So you're a scientist?

PC: *chuckle*..I've been known to dabble in a bit of assorted theories, relatively-speaking.

Me: Al, level with me: have you, Macy and the others actually found demonstratable evidence of the existence of the afterworld and a communications link to it?

PC: Indeed we have. Granted, what we refer to as 'demonstratable' evidence may not be so in the conventional sense to cynics, but to the open mind, we have found and compiled what we know to be not only evidence of the afterworld, but ways and means for that world and the physical world to communicate.

Me: You say your evidence is more definitive to the open mind, as opposed to that of a cynic. How so?

PC: The average man tends to believe only in what he can touch, feel, see, sense, and explain within the framework of his own established standards of reality and accepted sciences. His limited knowledge fails to comprehend or take into account the idea of other realms, or vastly differen and as yet undiscovered laws of Nature and physics that he can't as easily touch, feel, see or sense. Man is singularly naive in making assumptions that he knows what the laws of physics are, since he knows at this point only that which he has been able to see, test and prove, and explain in his terms of understanding. Believe me, the cosmos have bared but a fraction of it's complex nature and dynamics to Mankind. Even we are barely beginning to grasp a whole new reality-dynamic with the ITC project.

Me: So...you support the theory that Macy espouses, including the existence of this Marduk place on a parallel dimension with our own?

PC: Absolutely.

Me: Al, your positive assertions aside, nothing sells like tangible, "show me" proof.

PC: I was once of that mindset too. I know better now. Just as my friend Isaac has come to re-examine some of his own theories in the dawn of new enlightenment, opening the mind to possibilities beyond the horizon of what you see, and new dimensions of thought and rationale are potentially infinite.

Me: That's fine rhetoric for a sci-fi seminar Al, but it still doesn't get to the point that documented proof of what Macy, you and your associates are claiming, is at best debatable.

PC: The proof we have, as you refer to it, is in abundance. The openess of the mind to receive and assimilate it is the key to grasping that beyond the merely "I can pick this up and feel it, therefore it is" mentality that limits your grasp of the evidence. The open mind is prerequisite to being able to receive and understand communications between where you are and I am.

Me: I still am having an issue with...uh...what did you mean by "where you are?"

PC: That's just a figure of speech. I really must be going now. Thank you for the interesting conversation. Try Mark another time.

Me: Well thank you for your time, Al. For my column, can I have your last name?

PC: Einstein. Bye now.

Me: Thank yo....say WHO? Whoa, don't hang u...*click*

I tried to call the number back without success, so I tried having a US West operator connect me; she informed me that the number I gave her didn't exist.

*Theme music from whatever sci-fi show you choose*

So...believe or not what you want from this, but one thing's certain: if that number doesn't exist, the call to it hadn't better show up on my phone bill. Can you imagine the potential charge for a direct dial inter-dimensional long distance phone call?

Ewwwwwww.