The following sentence appeared in one of those 419-scam attempts that increasingly stuff our junk-E-mail boxes:
I WOULD LIKE YOU TO STAND AS THE BENEFICIARY TO OUR DECEASED CUSTOMER MR.JOHN HUGHES, WHO MADE SOME DEPOSITS OF (15,000,000.00) POUNDS STARLINGS. (FIFTEEN MILLION POUNDS STARLINGS) WITH MY BANK.
The first question that comes to mind here, of course, is: Are the starlings dead or alive? Either way, they’re definitely going to create an ungodly mess for this poor man to clean up in his bank – not to mention the stink. I don’t know exactly how much your average starling weighs, but it’s far less than a pound, so we’re talking about possibly hundreds of millions of these nasty, noisy birds flapping around – or decomposing, as the case may be – in the Bank of Scotland. My advice to Mr. Colin Mathew (the letter’s alleged author) would be to stop wasting your time trying to hoodwink complete strangers with advance-fee schemes and demand immediate compensation from the estate of the deceased Mr. John Hughes, who, I can assure you, was NOT among the bank’s best customers. Oh, and DON’T open the door to the Bank of Scotland!
met-a-met 