What happens when you answer one of those random African or Middle Eastern emails?
Seoh Bong-seong, professor at Jeju College of Technology, almost found out the hard way and wrote a piece in the KT as a warning to all.
In Seoh’s defense, I don’t think those African email fraudsters write much in Korean so I could believe that is the first time he had ever heard of the scheme.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I like that he was able to work in the fact that he speaks six (or seven?) languages into an op/ed piece about cyberfraud.
Professor Seoh, what’s your favorite movie?
“Well, aside from English, I speak Chinese, Japanese, Russian, French and I’m now studying Spanish, so, what was your question again?”
But hey, maybe if I could speak seven languages, I’d be telling everyone about it too. I still wouldn’t be sending money to Africa, though.
Smart enough to speak six languages yet dumb enough to fall for an obvious scam. From now on he should call himself Mr. Savant.
I wish I had kept the email (I saved it for some time thinking I was going to blog about it) but I received one of these scam-mails about two years ago from someone claiming to be a North Korean defector living just outside of Seoul. Part of the letter claimed that he was tired of being mistreated by the South Koreans (his words – not mine) and that if I could help him he could get ahold of some money that was somehow tied up in a bank in China or North Korea (can’t quite remember). It seems that even the scammers from Africa are realizing that Korea is fast becoming the hub of gullibility. Need an example? The x-ray glass scheme blogged about a couple of days ago…….
I get at least 3 a day in my spam account. I cant believe people are still that stupid to fall for it heck there are web sites devoted to making these people look like fools.
my favorite one and god i wish i had kept it goes:
Dear________:
I am Seong Chong Hee brother of assassinated Korean President Park Chung Hee…
#4,
And here I sit saddened by the fact that I’ve got only Nigerian scam letters (and the last one was a couple of years ago – Symantec’s scam filter is set on high, I reckon). That’s a good one – it would have been semi-valuable.
I love 419 scams…gone wrong. Turnabout is fair play.
The best 419 scam that I ever received was one with this subject heading: “SCAM VICTIMS REIMBURSEMENTS SCHEME.”
I had some fun blogging on that one.
Jeffery Hodges
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Yes Korea is definitely becoming a theme of its own within the grand, evolving 419 literary tradition! — for which there really ought to be a comprehensive online museum. I receive maybe 6 per day, read a few to savor the variations, applaud a particularly creative or properly-spelled one… I saw my first one here in Seoul, in 1982 (tacked on the bull-board of an Eng teacher’s group-residence in Itaewon), written on paper, had been mailed thru the post — this genre predates the internet.
I too had a great Korea-theme one i wish i’d kept to post on this blog (but deleted by mistake, never yet got a replacement) — it claimed to be from the wife of (Daewoo Corp founder and int’l fugitive) Kim Woo-Chung hiding out in Hong Kong, offering to share his ill-gotten millions — what made me laugh-out-loud is that the scammer signed it “Mrs. Eleanor Woo-Chung” — he thought that Woo-Chung is the family name!!!
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