El­sa Wrench

"Your e-mail id has won �750,000.00 pounds,'' the junk mes­sage be­gan en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, "from the British JUM­BO draw, held on 7th Sep­tem­ber 2013 with ap­pli­ca­tion draw num­ber 014.''

Yippeee! I am rich. To claim the jum­bo funds, I have to pro­vide my full name, ad­dress, mo­bile phone num­ber, age, and coun­try. Oh yeah, and those sil­ly pro­cess­ing fees will have to be tak­en care of.

On top of that, I al­so am due to col­lect a few mil­lions ac­cu­mu­lat­ing in Ac­cra, Ghana. Lawyers over there have writ­ten seek­ing my con­sent to present me as the next of kin to the ac­count of a de­ceased client for claims val­ued at $18.4 mil­lion. Ap­par­ent­ly, there must be a short­age of will­ing next-of-kin im­per­son­ators in Africa and so "Mr John Ad­jei'' has to ply his le­gal ser­vices via the in­ter­net to for­eign folk any­where.

Ei­ther I should start pack­ing for a lux­u­ry world cruise or I am the most gullible woman ever born.

Every­one has re­ceived wacko scam e-mails at some point and I seem to get a nice thick share of the loons. I have had busi­ness pro­pos­als from princes and chiefs in Ghana; of­fers of se­cret mil­lions from the UK; and so­lic­i­tors from here, there and every­where are des­per­ate to help me get rich. All I ever have to do is send mon­ey for nec­es­sary le­gal ex­pens­es or tax­es and all my per­son­al and fi­nan­cial de­tails, just short of my blood type and full DNA pro­file.

Do peo­ple still fall for these hoax­es? Are folks so greedy they will elec­tron­i­cal­ly ex­pose their in­nards to any­one they meet on­line?

There used to be a say­ing pop­u­lar among con­men: you can't con an hon­est man. Hon­est peo­ple are not go­ing to try to out­smart the tax col­lec­tor or claim mon­ey that is not right­ful­ly theirs or be­lieve in get-rich-quick schemes be­cause hon­est peo­ple tend to be fa­mil­iar with hard work and per­sis­tence.

Usu­al­ly, it takes very lit­tle ef­fort for me to delete these scam e-mails. But de­pend­ing on my mood, I could al­so have some fun with the creeps.

To "Joy Joy Leo,'' who was so in­ter­est­ed in my health and want­ed to get to know me so we could "ex­change mu­tu­al ben­e­fits,'' I replied, "Dear Joy Joy, my health is equiv­o­cal. I could use your help. For mu­tu­al ben­e­fits, please come and clean my win­dows since I can't get up the lad­der these days. That way, I could see through you much bet­ter. Please tell me your bank ac­count num­ber, so I can send the air­fare. Can't wait.''

When the so­lic­i­tors from for­eign of­fer to make me cousins of de­ceased mil­lion­aires and ask for my con­tact in­for­ma­tion, I send them the ad­dress and phone num­ber of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. Wish I could eaves­drop on that con­ver­sa­tion.

But last week, I re­ceived a par­tic­u­lar mes­sage which had me think­ing that maybe I have been too closed-mind­ed. In­stead of be­ing so sus­pi­cious and cyn­i­cal, I should at­tempt to con­jure up a spir­it of ad­ven­ture. The mes­sage: "My name is Ellen Moore. I need you to help me com­plete my late hus­band dreams.''

My re­ply: "Dear Ellen, sor­ry that your hus­band is late. Mine is present and has no sense of hu­mour. Dreams are not per­mit­ted, es­pe­cial­ly those in­volv­ing strange men. Or women, bless him. How­ev­er, I con­sult­ed my as­tro­log­i­cal ad­vis­er and it seems I am due for a galac­ti­cal lifestyle change. Please send a pic­ture of your­self, prefer­ably ful­ly clothed and clean-shaven, and give your wig a good rinse-out in Det­tol an­ti­sep­tic lo­tion be­fore styling.''

Alas, I am yet to hear an­oth­er word from Ellen. She is prob­a­bly still curs­ing me for mak­ing her ru­in her wig.

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