{"id":628,"date":"2011-02-24T20:05:23","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T01:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=628"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:24","slug":"pam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2011\/02\/pam\/","title":{"rendered":"$pam"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just got another one of those <\/em>spams: an official of a poor African nation offers millions of dollars to some random person, out of the blue, who happens to be you:<\/p>\n

Office of Presidency
\nPayment Office of Paymaster General
\nAccra Ghana.<\/em><\/p>\n

Attn: Beneficiary, <\/em>Approval To Your Fund Release.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was resolved after the Board meetings 20th of January 2011 by the foreign Remittance office to release your outstanding payment of $2.5m USD waiting for transfer as we began this First Quarter fiscal payment. You are to reconfirm to us all this information below for your payment.<\/em><\/p>\n

We sincerely apologies for our late contact with you, We are committed to serve you better.<\/em><\/p>\n

At first, there is something almost charming about the ham-handedness of the approach, the blatant disregard for spelling and grammar and, to top it off, the apology for not having contacted me sooner about my $2.5 million windfall!<\/p>\n

But then I ask myself: would this same spam seem so “charming” if it had been written by someone in Russia, Estonia, China or New Jersey impersonating <\/em>the so-called Paymaster General of Ghana?\u00a0 No, it wouldn’t.\u00a0 The chuckles arise from imagining there is a genuinely unsophisticated person trying to make money this way.\u00a0 The reality is, the messages come from organized crime<\/a>, and the earnest attitude and misspellings are carefully calculated to elicit responses from vulnerable people.\u00a0 If this didn’t work, they wouldn’t do it.<\/p>\n

I realize this topic is old news.\u00a0 What inspired me to post this is that, after all these years, the scam lives on.\u00a0 This is what amazes me.\u00a0 If anything, I get more “Money from Africa” spam now than ever.\u00a0 Someone must be biting on it.\u00a0 But who?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just got another one of those spams: an official of a poor African nation offers millions of dollars to some random person, out of the blue, who happens to be you: Office of Presidency Payment Office of Paymaster General … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2145,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/2145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}