Mining Monday: the 419
My old scam-and-hoax search engine project, Purportal.com, grew out of a longstanding morbid fascination with the variegated forms of fraud, especially those that have flourished in email and on the web. The other day I came across a form letter I used to send in response to “419” gambits, also known as “advance free fraud.” Excerpt:
The fund you speak of, in the South African Mining Corporation, is of great interest to me since my recently deposed brother-in-law, erstwhile shoeshine boy to the one-time International pie-eating champion’s third cousin twice removed by marriage…