Good try, "Mr. Hawkins!" I'll bet that he will find someone who will take him up on this "offer" and not be savvy enough to recognize it as a scam/spam! Good for you for knowing it.

That's just utterly stupid! If anyone falls for that....?

I stopped at "undisclosed sum of money".

And I stopped at Good Day Sir/Madam!

I use gmail. It lets me delete crap, without opening/reading it.

Moni

You should respond (from a free throw-away account that you would create for this purpose) and tell Mr. Hawkins how thrilled and excited you are. Give him "your address" which, in reality, will be the address of your local FBI office, CIA office, or Police Department. ;-)

this scam has been around for a couple of years.

do NOT reply at all.

I just thought it was very funny. And talk about L-O-N-G run-on sentences!

Thus same kind if scam gas been around for DECADES! Apparently it works.

What pile of baloney.

I'd just like to meet the person who would fall for such a thing.

Here's what I like with this kind of nonsense...a rational person would conclude this was either: 1) a scam, or 2) legitimate and a solicitation to engage in a criminal act. Should I choose door #1 or #2?

lily-

Yes, it sounds ridiculous to most of us, but they only need to occasionally find one person to make a living out of this thing. Unfortunately, that one person is sometimes elderly and in the early stages of dementia where their judgment is clouded. There are many people who have lost large sums of money through similar schemes. Some of the folks who run these scams are very effective and skilled manipulators and they sometimes hook people in with a request for a small sum for something like a FedEx delivery. Then there is an unexpected problem and a need for a little more money, etc. I have read about some otherwise savvy people who have gotten sucked in. Like a Belgian businessman who, over a period of months sent over $130,000 dollars abroad before he started to get desparate. He foolishly arranged to fly to Africa to meet the person he was corresponding with. After he got to Africa, he disappeared and has never turned up. Some of the people doing these scams are dangerous people, which is why it's best to not do anything, like try to have a little fun with them; just hit the delete button and move on.

I do know of one guy who spends his time baiting and exposing these people, but he warns others not to do it, and he takes extreme measures to conceal his internet identity, like using proxy servers and having his web site registered through a proxy that makes it essentially impossible to find him that way. However, if you want to read his archive of the craziness that occurs when he strings these scammers along, here is the link: 419eater (the 419 reference comes from the section of the Nigerian penal code relating to such scams, as Nigeria is notorious for this kind of activity).

Darn. I'd love a box with 3.6 million. Must be a big box if it's cash.

My daughter almost fell for the IRS call threatening jail time for past due taxes. She's not stupid, but she's very trusting and she's very much law-abiding! Fortunately she texted me and her sister while she was on the phone with them and we both told her SCAM hang up!

A police officer was on the news last night. He got the IRS scam call also - saying they were going to arrest him. He said go ahead, you've reached the police department. They quickly hung up on him.

These posts always make me think of one of those TV shows I saw, people with super powers, ....where there's a small child who reads minds and walks up to this guy in a library who's emailing scams. She visually sees him wearing native African clothing and tells him she wishes he would get a job and stop lying to people. This guys in Illinois.....that's him! lol

I don't remember what show I saw THAT on ..... but it stuck with me....:0)

I liked the fact that even after supposedly ascertaining that the recipient was 'a reliable person', the writer still didn't know their name! Hmmm...

My cousin has a friend who wired $5000 to someone as part of the "grandparent" scam. Frankly, I've always wondered if my cousin didn't do the same - she sounded as if she just might have done. She's not stupid but not at all worldly.

I received an email saying that I could go to any Western Union and pick up my $5,000. After I pick up the first check I have to call and let them know, then I go back every day for a month and pick up my other $5,000. Whew, I never knew when I buried my dollar before New Year's I would get this gift. LOL, if only it were true.

All that money and they would pick ME to give it to, for a fee....um, yeah...

Another scam is where they send you a check for, say, $5000 and have you deposit it in your account. Then you are then supposed to immediately wire them back a portion of it as a fee, like $500. Three or four days later when the check bounces, you find you're out $500 ;-)

To fall for these things you really have to be living in a cave somewhere, totally ignoring any sort of news, advice or information. To be receiving it via email you have internet and should be warned. But I realized last fall just HOW gullible and stupid people are in this country and subsequently, I've lost compassion for people who are "not stupid" who do totally stupid and ridiculous things when they should and usually do know better. So many people just WANT to believe any lie they hear, especially if it's something they want to believe. Sometimes you have to let the kid touch the stove after warning them enough times. They have to learn from the burn most of the time but sometimes they still won't admit they were wrong. OK, learn how you can learn. And there's often the well I thought... comment when no, they didn't think. This blind faith brainwashing strikes over and over. I've become quite numbed to the whining, crying and complaining and have to say most of the time "you knew better".

Well, bless your heart, Cynic. You have it all figured out.

I have to at least partially agree with Cynic?!? I find it very sad that there are people who will lose potentially EVERYTHING by falling for something like this. One of those "if it sounds too good to be true..." Back when the IRS phone scam was really going, I got TWO calls from different "special agents" in a 1-2 week span. I think I may have even kept the messages on my machine. One was from Special Agent Steve Martin... picturing a banjo and an arrow thru his head. Second was from Special Agent Raymond Burr... cue the courtroom scene.

I watched my elderly MIL decline mentally over a period of about 25 years. Prior to her retirement as a director of human resources for a US manufacturing company, she was smart and capable. But age took its toll on her mind. The signs of cognitive decline are quite subtle, and the person can go for years concealing their illness. That's what she did - she was an excellent liar - and unfortunately, for many years she was essentially living a financial lie. Credit card companies will give you more and more credit as long as you pay the minimum on your bill, which she did.

One scam she got caught up in was a phone service. She believed that she had purchased insurance for her telephone lines. If there were any problem, this company that she paid monthly would repair the lines in and outside the house. In reality, she paid $7 or $8 per month for years to rent a cheap phone the company had sent her, besides paying her normal bill to the phone company. My ex-husband had a hell of a time getting her out of this "contract" because they wanted "their" phone back.

There were others: someone claiming to represent the local fire department that she gave money to, yearly insurance on jewelry, and I'm sure many others that we never found out about.

To believe that everyone should be smart and savvy and able to see through scams just means to me that you have led a narrow life.

There was a sad case here in Canada where a woman got ensnared by a phone call from a scammer. I got the feeling that English was not her first language, she was relatively uneducated and she may have had immigration problems. Long story short, no doubt the scammers detected her accented English and blackmailed her with threats of deportation. She gave them all the money that she owned and when the threats persisted, she became ill and had to be admitted to hospital for psychiatric care. Scammers can be very slick and convincing, and unfortunately they take advantage of preying on the defenseless.

Just for kicks, I Google mapped the address, since I don't live all too far from there. Guess what? It's a car wash!

Another on:

I got a call from someone a couple of months ago from the "Microsoft Security Department" claiming that they had detected a virus on the Windows operating system of my computer and that I needed to give them access to it so they could help me remove the infection. I let him give me his phony spell for a little while, and when he was done I asked him which operating system it was because I had several computers. He couldn't tell me, of course, and then I lied and said: "That's very strange because I only have Apple computers." There was silence for about 10 seconds and then he hung up!

If you want to watch something hysterical, take a look at this young woman who leads a phone scammer on for a number of minutes; she's perfect: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tHGcnG4Z-eU