In the book's opening foray, Servant responds to "the only son of late King Arawi of tribal land" in Togo. It seems the king has died and his son needs help to get his $75 million inheritance. Servant can get 20 percent if he helps. Servant first demands and negotiates a higher percentage. Once he's done that, he tells the prince he doesn't want the money in cash because the quantity would be difficult to conceal. Instead, he wants to be paid in diamonds, gold and lions. As the prince continues to try to get bank account numbers or some $2,000 sent to him by Western Union to start the inheritance process, Servant begins insisting that the lions, or at least one, can talk. And even when Servant tells the prince he has no money, the prince offers to send him talking lions if Servant can just send him $500 or $700 to cover the cost of shipping them to Scotland.
Much of the humor is simply the audacity with which Servant yanks the scammers' chains. Yet evidently on legal advice, Delete This at Your Peril contains plenty of footnote disclaimers that, for example, no bowling club in Broughty Ferry has a Saucy Cartoon Competition. Yet there is another common thread beside humor. The persistence of the scammers shows they will stop at little or nothing if they believe they have a fish on the line. All that matters is getting the mark to send a bank account number or make a Western Union money transfer. It would have been interesting if Servant had retained the dates and times on the e-mails to see how long it was taking the spammers to respond to his bizarre questions and requests.
Overall, this is an enjoyable trip as Servant leads spammers down the garden path. The biggest problem is the path doesn't end in a spike-filled pit.
Article comments
1 - Yvette Kelly
Hah sounds good.My family who owns a water bottling factory had advertised on some website that we were looking for 15 gallon water bottle and lo and behold,we received a mail asking us to quote on supplying water to a refugee camp in Togo as well.We went ahead even though we had done our homework and all info they gave us were duds.After submitting our quote we were immediately informed that we had won the contract.All we needed to do now was transfer EU7000 into a bank ac to secure the contract.We made up a dud bank deposit slip for EU 70 000(our country's laws stipulate that we pay 10% at least in deposit when securing a foreign contract,remember???).After a few days we contacted them to tell them that their bank had rejected our transfer and returned our money.Boy was that fun!! The e mails that went flying,the panic,the horror.We eventually had to end that business relationship!!!!!!