I GET EMAIL

I GET EMAIL

One Mohamad Abdul Rahaman has sent me an email via a Yahoo email address:

Subject: Compliments of the day to you,

Hello ,

Compliments of the day to you, I am Mr Mohamad Razaly Abdul Rahaman, I’m sending this brief letter to solicit your partnership to transfer the sum of $19.5million US Dollars. I shall send you more information and procedures when I receive a positive response from you. Please respond to the following email: spammer@spammygit.com

Best Regards,

Mr. Mohamad Razaly Abdul Rahaman.

I get dozens of these emails, and 99 times out of 100, they go straight in the trash. But something about this one irked me: It's lazy, there's no effort, no attempt even to draw me into his little web of greed and despair.

In short, he's annoyed me. I reply:

Dear Mohamad,

Thank you for your email and your interesting offer, viz 19.5m US dollars.

I'd like to say I'm interested, but frankly, where's the backstory? It's almost as if you haven't bothered, and this laziness, my friend, will be your downfall. Every online crim worth his salt is banging out emails saying they're officials from Libya's Oil Ministry and are trying to get their funds out of the country now that Gaddafi's been knocked on the head. And frankly, you don't even give me that.

Where's the urgency? Where's the pulled heart-strings? Where's the link to an almost plausible news story? Where's the appeal to my sense of charity and its evil twin brother that is greed? Nowhere, that's where. FAIL, my friend, FAIL.

Write it again, and I expect your reply on my desk by end of school today. No excuses.

Your new best pal

Albert O'Balsam

He does not reply.