I have great news to share with you! Check out this fabulous email opportunity I received today, along with my running commentary:

Compliments of the season. It is indeed my pleasure to write to you this letter , which I believe will be a suprise, as we are
both complete strangers.

I don't know about you, but I'm not a complete stranger. You're a complete stranger. So yes, I am certainly surprised to be reading this letter.

I work for the ministry of minerals and Energy in south Africa, and by this letter I am representing and also acting on
behalf of two of my senior colleages( The Director-General and The Group Manager) whose mandate I have gotten, to contact a trusted and reliable foreign based businessmen, concerning the business matter of mutual benefit to all.

So you work for two unnamed colleagues from a country I have never visited, you don't know who I am, and you are looking for a trusted and reliable businessman, and therefore you contacted me? What a strange coincidence, since I am not a businessman at all.

By this mandate given to me, we are in dire need of a foreign partner to assist us in the transfer/investment of USD24,000,000,00. ( Twenty-four million United States Dollars).

You're killing me buddy, this sentence doesn't even make any sense!

The key issues are the transfer and the subseqent investment of the said sum. We are ready to go into an
agreement with you and also offer you a negotiable fee for putting together an investment potfolio.

Wow, I knew Personal Finance would come in handy some day. This guy is ready to go into an agreement with me despite the fact that we are "complete strangers". How trusting!

It does not matter whether or not you own a company or you have invested funds before. We shall guide you on what to do.

Well that's good to know, because I certainly do not own a company and am just as likely to invest all of your money into my own bank account as I am to put together a solid growth portfolio.

The basis will be that a major company won a contract and subcontracted it to you . More often, big trading companies and firms of unrelated field win contracts and subcontract to more specialised firms for execution.

See, the problem with this analogy is that a) I hadn't competed for any contract, never mind won one, and b) I am not a more "specialised" firm. Whoops.

We shall follow strictly all legal procedure entailed in our laws and international laws in transfering the funds to you. The source of this funds is legitimate and authouritative.

Really? What is that source then? If it's legitimate, then please tell me exactly where the money is coming from, because it sure sounds fishy to me.

Please be informed that under the South African Government monetary policy, strategic positioned government officials are not allowed to operate or own bank account overseas, hence our need for a foreign partner to front for us.

But you are allowed to send money to "complete strangers" to the tune of 24 million USDollars? What strange laws you have.

We pray that you take the essence of this letter in stict confidence, as the two officals involved would not like to be exposed on this.

Don't worry, I won't do anything stupid like post it to the web or anything.

Kindly notify me by e-mail for futher details, upon your acceptance to assist us.Details will be made available to you as soon as you reply. Thank you and God bless you, as we wait for your urgent response.

Don't worry, you'll get a response :-)


Best regards,

Benni Zuma
zuma@diplomats.com


In case you were wondering, diplomats.com is unreachable via www and was registered in March 11, 2002. Mr. Zuma has piqued my curiosity, so I am going to reply (under a fake email address of course, as amusing as these letters are I'd rather not receive them every day) and see what other details there are.

In case you'd like to read more about these sort of scams, go to the Urban Legends Website or read this funny description at Salon.com. I'll keep everyone posted if my reply gets further response.