The Ultimate Email Chain Letter

Yes, everything you read on the Internet is true

By Nury Vittachi

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I am an internet addict and yesterday I had my best ever day. I logged on to receive an email from Dr Idowu Ndubueze in Nigeria who has US$70 million accidentally left over from a big oil company deal. He wants to give me 20 per cent just for looking after his cash. That’s US$14 million! What a way to start the day. I wrote back and said, yes please.

I decided to spend the first couple of million bucks in advance by investing in a diamond company “guaranteed to soar in value” according to an insider hot stock tip from a kind stranger emailing me from a place called Andorra.

But before I could reply, I was forwarded an email about a poor nine-year-old kid dying of cancer and if you clicked on the link, the Make-a-Wish-Foundation would pay for his medicine. Well now I was rich, I wanted to pass my good luck on. As I was about to click the link, an email appeared with URGENT in the subject box.

Before I could read it, I had to delete a piece of spam offering to increase the length and girth of one of my favourite organs. Wow, is their ad-targeting system out of line!

The urgent note was from a friend who said that Bill Gates was going to cancel the entire MSN service in a week and would only change his mind if we forwarded this particular email to everyone in our address book to increase web traffic. If we sent it to 20 people we would have brilliant luck but if we sent it to only 10 people we would only have okay luck but if we sent it to less than 10 people something really bad would happen to us like our crush would ignore us for a week.

I had only managed to forward it to seven friends when I got an MSN message about this guy who bought a meal from Kentucky Fried Chicken and it turned out to be a deep fried rat! Ewwww! It happened to a friend of a friend of his last week. I decided to cheer the guy up by forwarding a cookie recipe from Neiman Marcus. It’s worth US$250 so it’s a good deal.

But before I could find the recipe in My Documents, an email arrived from the head of HSBC, the bank. He was writing from a hotmail account, which seemed a bit strange, but his note explained that he was checking up on his customers’ bank account details, and could I please input my name and bank account and password so that my money would be safe.

How kind of him! This will ensure that the US$14 million I get from Dr Idowu Ndubueze in Nigeria will be safe.

But before I could input my password, an email flashed up from a group called “the Darwin Awards committee” about someone who had died horribly. Apparently this guy felt a bug crawl into his ear so he decided to get rid of it by sticking a stick of dynamite into his ear and lighting it. He got the idea from the Internet. The explosion blew his head right out of the window.

Wow, it’s amazing how gullible some Internet users can be.

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Comments

[NERD!]

As far as I know, Andorra is a planet in the Star Trek universe populated by blue folk with antenna. As they were founding members of the United federation of Planets I would assume that any stock tips they tell us would be accurate.

Now if it were the sexy green women from the Orion Syndicate, then I would say that info would be quite dubious...

[Chang]

Hi Nury

I too used to receive many e-communications from relatives of Generals, Bank Governors and Ministers of certain W. African country looking for assistance from "honest" people.

You got to admit that 30% of promised rewards run into millions of bucks.

One day, I could not resist the temptation and sent out 3 replies offering my assistance. I made sure I told them the truth that I was a jobless scum, living on welfare, with no money in my pocket and not possessing a bank account. One thing I had in abundance was "honesty".

What do you know? I heard nothing from them for a long long time. In fact, I noticed a diminishing number of such emails.

Strangely, one of them did send me a reply sometime ago on how she found some kind hearted person who helped her out, sorted out her stack of cash and how that person was rewarded. I sent her a note that I was happy she got her money moved but that I was not so happy for the kind-hearted bloke who helped her out.

[ErN_T]

Dear Mr. Vittachi,

Your work is totally awsome. There is not one article that ive read so far and failed to be fed with ecstasy to the mind.

keep up the gd work ;)

http://www.419eater.com

[Steven Davies]

The Ultimate Email Chain Letter.
That is really a great way to increase website traffic.
I will try it!

[Rossen]

Hi Nury,
I too had received a mail of this sort some time ago and guess what the name was "Maria Luza" i went with the flow for awhile and when it came to the point that they wanted me to come to Ghana I told them that i would send this lady and her son a ticket to come to London so we could meet up as I was really busy and wanted them to send me a copy of their passports, they wanted me to send them money to get it done... finally I called their bluff and i still see the name flash on my chat.
By the way I love all of your articles. Cheers