Mariam

Good day, we hope this massage will get to you in good condition, this is one of the western union branch located in Dakar Senegal, we received a bank draft check from a reverend father residing in Senegal here called reverend Desmond Cessay who is one of the reverend fathers in the refugee camp here, and the amount we saw is $300,000.00 and we have interviewed him about this check and he explain to us how it came to his hand from a girl called Rose Adams who were in refugee and is now residing in Paraguay as he said, he further explained that he brought the check to the western union branch here for security reasons as you failed to take the check from him as it was kept for you as compensation, so he don't want to still keep the check in his position so that he will not lose the check, we want to hear from you if actually you are aware of this so that we can forward the money to you by our authority, we await your feedback.

Dear "one of the western union branch"

... if that is indeed your real name. Let's start at the beginning.

Concerning the condition your message got to me in, I must unfortunately report that it seems to have arrived in quite a sorry state. There are several grammatical errors present, I noticed punctuation issues, many words that should be capitalized are not, and the whole email - an entire paragraph - is a single sentence! Therefore, even asking me whether this message arrived in "good condition" is rather offensive. The words "good" and "condition" should never have been used in the same sentence concerning this message, given that through your wording you seem to be implying the so called "condition" of this message must have been caused en route, that is, as your message was in transit to my Inbox. Am I supposed to believe some Internet daemons intercepted it along the way and wrought linguistic havoc upon it? I think not! It was you, "one of the western union branch", that is responsible for an almost criminally poor state of this message. So do not attempt to shift the responsibility. You and you alone are to blame.

Moving along.

Two words immediately caught my eye amidst the ungodly mess that is this email. The name Rose Adams.

If I recall correctly, I issued Ms. Adams an ultimatum that it was my belief she agreed to, only to never hear from her again. It is amusing to see that she thinks she can buy my forgiveness with a measly $300.000. That kind of pittance means nothing to me. I spend more than that on my meals every day (you see, I only eat from tableware made of ivory which must never be reused).

Regardless, Ms. Rose's sentiment-laced monetary gesture is well understood. She seems to think that her... bribery... may quell my vengeful spirit. This whole ordeal is rather amusing in my estimation. For you see, I have - since our last correspondence - forgotten about Ms. Rose entirely. This latest futile gesture of hers, however, once again alerted me to her existence. And of course, I perceive the paltry amount of money offered to me as a great insult. The reason I failed to reply in a timely manner is because I was busy devising an appropriate scheme to avenge my wounded pride. Today I finally thought of an appropriate response. It was so simple I could not believe I haven't thought of it sooner.

I shall use the money she left me to hire a gardener. I shall have him cultivate a black rose. Once the plant blooms, I shall gather the most exquisite of the blossoms, lace it with cyanide, and send it to Ms. Adams. The symbolism may be a bit on the heavy side, I admit. But I do revel in dramatic irony!

Anyhow, to cut the long story short, yes, I want the money. What must I do for it to be sent to me?

With best regards,
Steve

Thank you for your respond in reference to our massage, we are not here to exchange words with you or to exercise how good we can write, our respond will go to the point you made mention of someone intercepting our account, yes that we do not know and in respond to that we have changed our password should in case such thing is going on without our notice. Concerning the money, this is what we got from the reverend we told you about, of which he explained everything about Rose Adams to us, we only contacted you to confirm if truly you are the right person, you have the right to make a decision either to take the money or not, therefore if you are willing to take the money we urge you to forward your information as follows,

Your home address.

Your date of birth.

One of your government issued identity card.

Dear still unsigned,

you may be asking yourself why I am responding to this message more than a year late. The answer is quite simple, really. While I do relish the thought of Ms. Adams suffering in exile in Paraguay, the sad truth is, I was unable to gleefully contemplate her miserable circumstances for long. There were so many other people in my - relatively to Ms. Adams - close proximity at the time who have slightly wronged me or marginally offended me, rendering our social contracts null and void, requiring me to take immediate retaliatory steps.

That being said, it brings me great joy to report those miscreants have by now been permanently dealt with, setting an example which led to drastic decrease in slights against me. It is therefore with great joy I can once again turn my full attention to Ms. Adams.

Anyway, the money. Find requested details below:

- Your home address:
12 Pollock's Path, The Peak, Hong Kong

- Your date of birth:
November 3rd, 1982

- One of your government issued identity card:
I do not recognize the right of any individual or group to monopolize violence and therefore view all forms of government as illegitimate and now I'm just writing whatever because I know your eyes have already glazed over to the next paragraph... Jesus was black, the moon landing was faked, the Earth is flat. Ah... feels good to say when you know nobody is reading.

I hope to hear from you soon lest I find another peasant to torment.

Best regards,
Steve

Dear customer, your massage has brought much of attention to us. Actually, we did not know there are other activities going on in our email by an intruder, and this has been for so long without our consent, after going through your massage we find out that our email was hacked by online criminals thereby manipulating our transactions. The massage in question you received was not from us, the only massage we sent to you was on August 2015 when they brought the cheque to us but we did not hear from you. Then, in 9th September same 2015 we cashed the money and transferred it to visa card as we await your respond to proceed to send it to you, but unfortunately we couldn't get a feedback from you and since then we have not sent any massage to you, and the card expired on 9th September 2018. So all you have seen is from the hackers. we saw where they made mention of changing the password, that was a lie, we never changed our password except now that we have noticed the unusual activities, We are happy you did not fall a victim to that.

We also have noticed that some of the massages they sent to our customers was not during our working our, therefore, they operate when we have closed and each massage they sent is been deleting from the sent box so that we will not notice their activity.

So, the massage we sent to you in 2015 was not about cheque, it was about visa card which we applied before sending you the massage. To confirm what we are telling you now, we attached the visa card, open in and you will see.Now we are going to apply for another card which will cost $600 both the shipping, you have to send to us the $600 to enable us apply for the new card. Feel free to reply to us, our email is properly secured now, thank you Mr Steve.

Dear to this day still unsigned,

in the spirit of transparency and continued cooperation, I must confess to something. I did not understand a single goddamn sentence in your email.

I was undeterred, however. I decided to hire five linguistic experts - who collectively responded to my recruitment notice suspiciously quickly - to decipher your poorly conceived message while I retired to my triclinium with several financially struggling beautiful Scandinavian women who reluctantly agreed to feed me Ruby Roman Grapes dipped in Elvish honey and with two muscular Filipino youngsters - imported for just such purpose - tasked with fanning me with giant leaves from an endangered palm tree.

Alas, it infuriates me to report that the linguists were not what they seemed. When I emerged from my hedonistic indulgences a few hours later to inquire about their progress, I discovered the room I left them in and the adjacent hallways curiously devoid of valuables therein. This necessitated certain additional expenditures, namely a small mercenary force of private investigators and hitmen to track these men down and... convince them to return my antiques, as well as a number of enhanced interrogation specialists to... have a conversation with my staff whom I refuse to believe were oblivious to the dispossession of my belongings from beneath the very roof they work under.

The entire ordeal ended up costing me roughly $650.000 US, a bill I shall be expecting you to repay in full given your email's unintelligible grammar structure was the proximate cause of all my troubles detailed above. Please provide me with your banking details as soon as possible so that my accountant may generate an invoice for you.

That aside, I would ask that you overhaul your last email so that it is understood immediately and therefore avoids unnecessary expenses.

Best regards,
Steve

P.S.: Also, please sign your name at the bottom of your next email already so that I know who the hell I'm talking to.

Thank you Mr Steve for your feedback.

we are sorry you have went through all these things explained. You must follow our instructions for us to archive this, so that it can be a replacement of all you have lost, as soon as we receive the money, we will apply for the card which will take 5 - 7 working days. Note, any further delay, the government will take over the ownership of this money as an abandoned property.

You have to make the payment through western union, go to any western union office and make the payment with the names of our accountant.

Name.....Jose Williams
Country.....Senegal
City......Medina

$600

Forward to us the payment receipt immediately the payment is done.

Thank you,
Mrs Mariam.

Dear Mrs. Mariam,

thank you for your kind words. It truly delights one to learn the capacity for compassion is not yet vanquished in these uncertain times. Furthermore, it brings me great joy to hear you plan to reimburse my losses. Truthfully, two thirds of a million dollars is not really an amount to lose any sleep over. I spend more than that on haircuts every week. However, it is the principle behind your dedication that earns my respect.

But let us dispense with pleasantries for the moment and turn to more serious matters.

Rest assured that your request for expediency lest the greedy paws of your government unjustly dispossess you of your own assets are not lost on me. I myself was once likewise victim to the whims of the great evil calling itself democracy. For years I lived under the illusion that the... shall we say... monetary gifts I strategically dispersed among the legislators in my country were used exclusively for their personal embetterment. To my eternal dismay, however, I discovered some of these disingenuous swindlers were instead funneling my hard-earned money to various social programs selfishly designed to benefit the very proletariat I worked so hard to dispossess.

Fortunately, the Cold War was in full swing at the time. This presented me with an unprecedented opportunity. Through skillful colloquy my emissaries were able to secure the promise of aid from the officials in Washington who were astonishingly easy to convince that my country was considering joining the Eastern Bloc. In light of these perceived circumstances they were more than happy to lend their assistance when an exceedingly simple, albeit crudely militaristic solution - which as such inherently appeals to Americans, God bless their hearts - was proposed to them by my long-time friend and commander of a local right-wing insurgency syndicate.

Long story short, the new regime was - and to this day remains - forever grateful for my help and is therefore much more understanding of my distaste for taxes. Moreover, as a happy consequence I did not fully anticipate, the peasants in my employ or debt seem far less eager to voice their complaints than ever before.

Ah, look at me reminiscing about the good old days. Apologies. Shall we move on?

As I write this email, the money you requested is already on its way to you. Unfortunately, the country I live in has no Western Union branch offices. I therefore had no choice but to send you the money the old fashioned way - via snail mail. Please accept the attached photographs as confirmation that the funds have been sent:

(Side note: as you can see from the pictures my incompetent fool of an accountant forgot to exchange my EUR to USD so I did not have the correct currency on hand. Please do not concern yourself with this too much. Him and his young family shall be punished severely for this blunder. I am not sure what the exchange rate is in your bank so I decided to throw in a couple more bills just in case.)

I kindly ask you let me know as soon as you receive the cash so that we may proceed.

Have a wonderful day.

Best regards,
Steve

Your kind attention mr Steve,

we are not here for joke if you intend to, you are urged to abide by our instructions, we are not in anyway demanding money from you for personal use, if we needed the money to be posted we should have told you and provide you the necessary information. Therefore, if you posted any money by mail, cancel it and take your money back, there is western union in your country, go to the western union and make the payment with the names given to you. Don't make this to be too difficult or to complicate our job, you must know we are not bothered about it, we are only doing our job, therefore, if you send it we start the process, but if you don't, there is nothing we can do than to drop your file.

Here is the names again, we awaits your respond.

Name..... Jose Williams
Country.....Senegal
City......Medina

$600

Forward to us the payment receipt immediately the payment is done.

Thank you,
Mrs Mariam.

Dear Mrs. Mariam,

I am not having a good day today.

This morning as I was going down the stairs from my bedroom to the dining room while penning a strongly worded letter to the soon-to-be former overseer of my sub-optimally performing investment portfolio, one of the Filipino youngsters (whom I believe I mentioned previously), Alejandro, irresponsibly tripped on one of the steps, causing him as well as his disloyal brother, Ernesto, to maliciously let go of the lectica I was being carried in. Fortunately, the lectica suffered no major damage - having landed on Alejandro - however it was not long before the true extent of the damage became apparent. As I looked to my hands I discovered to my horror that the nib of my fountain pen had splayed.

The shock was so great I even forgot to slap the blundering Ernesto - who was hurriedly trying to straighten out my tunic before selfishly rushing to his unconscious brother's aid - for his incompetence. That fountain pen was amongst my dearest possessions. It used to belong to my late wife until I discovered she had been carrying out an affair with one of my now deceased servants. Secretly preparing to elope, she used that very pen to write a message to her now departed lawyer asking for help in this endeavor. After her tragic premature death due to natural causes (as was rightfully determined by an incontestably unbiased court of law), I decided to keep the pen as a memento.

I thought this day could not get any worse. Then I read your email.

All the anguish I felt during this unfortunate episode was dwarfed by the rush of emotions brought upon by the verbal onslaught of your message. To be accused of joking after I poured my heart out to you during the course of the last few days, nay weeks... What kind of morally bankrupt demon would toy with a man's soul this way? Have you no decency?

And what exactly, pray tell, fuels your certitude about Western Union's omnipresence? Is it not the case that Western Union does not do business in neither Iran nor North Korea? Given this fact, how is it possible for you to so confidently proclaim that Western Union is indeed present in my country when I haven't even told you where I live?!

Besides, I cannot reclaim my envelope. The money has already been dispatched and I did not include a return address. Therefore, if you do not claim the money, I shall make a note to add those €2.000 to the previous sum of $650.000 which I am of course likewise still expecting you to return. And because you were so brazen as to dare impugn my honour, I shall expect you to pay me back with interest. Given all this, your debt to me (rounded up for the sake of convenience) now amounts to $670.000.

Lastly, because of my waining trust in your banking expertise - given the Western Union fiasco detailed above - I now require these funds to take the form of bearer bonds. Please provide me with the address of your business so that my minions can come claim them in person.

Best regards,
Steve

Thank you for your feedback,

We have told you what to do, the massages we get from you shows you are not willing for it. You said you have not told us where you come from but it seems you have forgotten.

Below is your previous massage.

Base on this, we are letting you know that, as a result of your negative replies which shows your inability to carry out this, we have called a lawyer to sign for the cancellation of this transaction. We are giving you three working days to send the money.

Mrs Mariam.