Everybody knows those e-mails.
Countless are sent every day, from different points of the world. First, we were annoyed by the regular mails. But then, they became interesting, because these unsolicited e-mails became the basis of a new book. Over a glass of red wine, we decided to make a book out of the stories and to look into the countless ip-numbers of the senders a little bit closer.
Over the years, since 2009, we have collected countless stories of scammers who selflessly bequeathed us inheritances, who wanted to share long-hidden gold treasures with us, plus fortunes of deceased dictators, legacies of fled regimes. Even a supposed Erich Honecker wanted to share the Stasi treasure from the urn with many people who had written to him. He pretended not to trust Margot, as well as his “tipsy successor Egon Krenz”.
One could not blame him. Over long spans, the mail traffic seemed like an evil persiflage on the GDR.
That gave us the idea for the book. The writer’s German was excellent and suggested that he had once lived in German-speaking countries. Or was still. But first, the fake Honecker wrote in English. The real Honecker spoke no English.
The only thing he seemed to be less familiar with was the appearance of the former chairman of the Council of State and his passing away.
He confused Honecker’s picture with that of Mielke…
Like a petulant little dictator, he kept demanding that we pay money through Western Union so that some papers could be finalized. What documents, we couldn’t figure out. The contact fell asleep.
The trace of all ip numbers, in this case, led to Dakar in Senegal. Probably to one of the countless internet cafés on Voie de Degagement N, which winds like a snake out of the African metropolis and passes the Dakar-Léopold Sédar Senghor airport. The address of the ip number was in Sacre Coeur 3 in Dakar, in the surroundings of a dingy industrial area, with some older buildings, cheap hotels, dismounts, warehouses, two highways, one to the north, the other tangent to the city centre. Right next to the catholic cemetery. Some smaller houses and former migrant workers’ quarter, which had recently been demolished, here and there a small market.
Here is still the Hotel Residence Mamoune, a commercial complex. The local bus service stops here for the last time at the main road. Tata vehicles are sold there. It’s a poor area where the ip number can be found. Countless yellow taxis speed along the highway towards Dakar. Private taxis stop at a bus stop opposite a hotel complex. Here and there are small market stalls. Here the scammers were probably hiding in one of the office complexes. The sea is not far away. A carriage with melons rolls by. It looks like any big African city. The trail silts up.
Perpetrator types are, in part, of extraordinary intelligence. They know how to apply pressure, they are brutal, audacious and, as we have found, they have a fitting explanation for everything. A modern, tightly organized colony of pushers hides behind the countless letters.
Some of the openers, who receive a few euros from the initiators for the business they are initiating, are under unspeakable pressure. The addresses are traded, worldwide, because all the writers attack the victims in a fit of attack.
In this blog, we want to find out the motivation and the background of the perpetrators who cause estimated annual damage of 20 billion Euros, in the EU alone.
Even Lieutenant General William Caldwell was not too bad to express his wish for a loving relationship after all his campaigns in the name of the Pentagon, on the way of clumsy pickup lines via Skype. He also had an incredible dowry with him, about 10 million US dollars, which he had received from an Afghan confidant. For what remained open. The fake Caldwell had mobile numbers from Ghana and the Samoa Islands. On the side, he earned money as a humanitarian and diplomat. In this context, he described his potency as unique and himself as a kind of sexual insatiable. Caldwell maintained an internet connection in the same corner of Dakar.
However, even a US Army general was and is only a person who pays with money, preferably via Western Union. And by pre-payment, which the general appreciated so much, he wanted to be the prove love to him. The sound became militarily rough during the Skype conversations and then broke down completely.
Supposedly noble spirits, who knew no other person in this world than to write to us to ask for help. The desperation seemed real for most of the time.
Every mail that came was copied into a file, and slowly the data flow swelled up. We had fun answering, asking questions to get a better picture of the invisible people who were writing to us again from Senegal. Numerous anecdotes were described.
The reported suffering of the writers was and is immeasurable:
Princesses held by drug dealers, gay princes from the Orient and countless other stories that would have left the Arabian storytellers of 1001 Nights speechless. Even astronauts who wanted to share a treasure they accidentally found next to the landing site during their visit to the moon were in the mail traffic. The fact that by this time, Neil Armstrong had already died (2012) did not bother the writer almost two years later. Dead men still have an ace up their sleeve, it seemed. The story was unique and could have been written by Jules Verne, who would undoubtedly have been green with jealousy and hung up his pen.
Apollo 11
According to history, the astronauts transported in the Apollo 11 capsule, the greatest treasure ever found; unfortunately, it sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean when they landed back on Earth in July 1969. A clumsy manoeuvre with the capsule and the lousy weather, the high waves were solid enough to sink the treasure to the bottom of the Pacific where it still lay. A murky, blurred picture was sent. It could have been taken in any standard bathtub in the dark.
Now the dead Neil Armstrong wanted to lift the treasure from the depths of the sea, and he needed money to do so. Sure, after all, it was very deep in the Pacific Ocean. This issue was emphasized again and again. It was like being in a prayer wheel. The scribe had already thrown the oceans into confusion, but he only noticed this later and apologized with the “language barrier”.
The cable alone swallowed about 200.000 US$ in the endless list of salvage. What such a rope was needed for was not revealed.
Unfortunately, Neil Armstrong fell silent sometime in the chilly days of January 2015, because at that time the former second wife of Gaddafi or even a minister of Benin wrote to us, even Saddam was there postmortem.
Saddam, escaping the rope
The latter offered us after he had escaped the rope by a lucky coincidence and one of his doubles, instead of hung, by the stupidity of the Americans. Hence, the story carried on, to share the entire gold and diamond treasure of Iraq with us.
Wow!
We had to take a deep breath, all the jewels stolen together. Saddam made no secret that he had long expected to be chased out of the country by the Americans as a scapegoat. For this reason, and because the despot of the Euphrates was a suspicious person, he buried the capriciousness of his terrorist regime in the safe deposit box of a bank in Zurich.
Which, he did not discuss.
The pseudo-Saddam proved to be a clever boy. He wrote several times that if he could not enjoy the luxury of not getting his money, he should have hung on the rope. The writer sent us a picture of Saddam smoking a fat Havana.
Of course, we couldn’t give him away. Shh!
Who’s going to do that with the prospect of 10% of a national treasure? We wrote back patronizingly that we would keep quiet. Of course, a certain amount of money had to be transferred again because Saddam had to get out of hiding. Western Union or Money-Gram. (!)
Whether he had dug another hole was not answered even after multiple inquiries. The undead pseudo-despot did not understand the question.
Of course, every dictator who came back from the realm of the dead also needed a considerable amount of expenses, on the problematic way to Switzerland to get the hard “earned” millions and then disappear forever. The resurrected Saddam announced this.
He diligently tried to make it clear that one of his followers, who lived with him in secret, could pick up the money in Baghdad.
At some point, contact was broken off. He lost the urge to demand 6000 US $ every day.
By Unknown author – http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/DVIC_View/Still_Details.cfm?SDAN=DDSD0501884&JPGPath=/Assets/2005/DoD/DD-SD-05-01884.JPG, Public Domain, Link
We did not have to wait long before the celebrity continued the round with a well-polished e-mail.
Safia Farkash al-Baraasi, a somewhat overweight, but judging by the e-mails, spirited woman was the second wife of the former Libyan despot with the umbrella.
She wrote of all her suffering in long e-mails, one of which we will print. We received the picture right with it. She was sure that the self-appointed grassroots revolutionary still enjoyed cult status in Europe.
“Dear Madam, Dear Sir,
I am Safia Farkash al-Baraasi, the second wife of the Libyan head of state.
We met in 1971 when Colonel Gaddafi was admitted to a hospital where I worked as a nurse. We were married the same year and have six sons and one daughter. I have your e-mail address from my husband’s notebook, and so I decided to contact you on this crucial issue. There are numerous business transactions between you and my husband known in our family. As you may know, after difficulties in Libya caused by rebels, my esteemed husband had to hide his movable property.
You have heard of the tragic death of my husband. Let me remind you once again who I am.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2011/oct/20/syria-libya-middle-east-unrest-live http://www.deccanherald.com/content/144251/libyas-first-lady-owns-airline.html
Everything that my whole family and I have, our last resource of U$25 million (twenty-five million US dollars) is ready to be transferred to you, in the hope that you will invest these funds in a good business in your country. In the expectation that the political turmoil will soon be over, I ask you. You can receive the money from the Finance Bank (United Arab Emirates) at any time.
We ask you to transfer the money to our accounts with the Finance Bank in Spain for a 30% commission.
I will send the contact information of the Finance Bank in (SPAIN) if you give me your contact details, which unfortunately were not included in the booklet. This includes your full name, address, age, occupation and telephone number. Please send the data to mrs_safia_gaddafi@rocketmail.com God bless you,
Mrs.Safia Farkash Gaddafi”
The name had already changed considerably within one DIN A 4 page.
Then Safia Farkash Gaddafi was gone by night, we never received a life signal of the fake again