Hastings Forum

This one arrived in my Inbox today. Too beautiful not to share .. such an eloquent and touching appeal. Do you think I should respond?

It's not often that one is honoured by the chance to help a rich Shiek in Oman sort out his financial woes. An awful lot of noughts in that sum - even more than in my pension payments ...

“Dear,

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
Peace be upon you and mercy be upon you and blessings be upon you

I am sending my greetings to you from the Sultanate of Oman, In the
capital city of Muscat.

I have funds worth "Twenty Seven Million Five Hundred Thousand United
State Dollars" -$27.500.000.00 US Dollars which i want to entrust on
you for investment project in your country.If you are willing to
handle this project on my behalf, kindly reply urgent to enable me
provide you more details to start the transfer process.

Thanks
Yours Truly Aisha”

What worries me about these cries for help is that they must sometimes bear fruit, otherwise the perpetrators wouldn't do their perpetrating!

There are plenty of dummies out there .. I have a friend who "won a prize draw" or something (which he never entered). He sent off a fiver, his name and address were passed around, within a few months you could literally fill a dustbin bag with all the junk letters, offers, prizes and special prices for Viagra - the Post Office couldn't handle it. Took a year to block it all!

I get plenty of those every now and then. It's best to ignore them.

The only way is to ignore them. It's a bit like the scams on Facebook etc. - the Post Office must know that most of the "offers " and "prize draws" passing through their hands are bogus but it all makes money for the Post Office, so they don't operate any filters.

Although most of that junk mail has now been surplanted by scams, trolling, fake news etc. etc. on the internet. It must in some way add to the profits, otherwise the social media would tackle it effectively.