This is truly one for the “you can’t make this shit up” file. Let’s see, the story is only three days old, but we have: overnight bankruptcy of IT-Factory, a supposed “best case” company suspected embezzlement of €70-130 million by…
Scams
Jeremy Wagstaff’s recent Jakarta Post article “How to Lose Everything You’ve Got” recounts the woes of a poor man in India suckered by advance fee fraudsters. By now his relatives were losing patience. “By this time it was already seven…
Regular readers of Desirable Roasted Coffee know how much I enjoy Nigerian scam letters. I feel they are a sorely unappreciated genre, one worthy of many years of study by linguists and cultural anthropologists, and not unlike poetry. I will…
Addendum: Lorelle van Fossen, who is probably no stranger if you are using WordPress, was kind enough to quote this post extensively on her blog. But, browsing her blog, I realized that, had I already been reading Lorelle, I could…
Update: I see Shel Israel posted on the Bitacle Scam, yesterday, with support and advice from Amy Gahran. Dante reserved the 8th circle of hell for thieves and falsifiers. Since he was pre-Internet, I’ve taken the liberty of assigning spammers…
We all get those scam letters: “God bless, I am the widow of Wilson Obote, former minister of village relocation, and I have the sum of $45 (forty-five) million….” The New Yorker runs an article this week about the perfect…
[UPDATE: This post was first titled DRC ripped off by Mobitype, a Löic Le Meur venture. At the time of the post, Löic Le Meur was listed as the chairman of Mobitype's board. In the days after this post, both...
The Sprint Ambassador program got around to me today, which I guess ranks me about like Niger or Mali on their diplomatic list. I mean, they got to Rubel (France?) and Jarvis (NATO?) months ago, and we all know those…
Intelligent Design is the big thing in educationally-circumscribed circles, but what can you do? Belief is belief. Now that the Pastarians Pastafarians have outed themselves, I suppose I will have to go back out on the Sweetbreads Are Grace in…
From CNET comes the word that at least one letter-writer is out of work: A Nigerian court has sentenced a woman to two and half years in jail after she pleaded guilty to fraud charges in the country’s biggest e-mail…
