A Scam With A Personal Touch

Has this ever happened to you? Has a scam artist tried so hard to convince you of his veracity that he’s called you?
We came home mid-afternoon yesterday to find a message on our answering machine. A man with a thick African accent, ostensibly calling from England, said he’d sent me an email and told me to check it.
I couldn’t make out most of what he said although the plaintive demands to check my email were clear.

My caller’s email wove a sad tale of being a Catholic priest with HIV who’d had his liver removed last year. Would I please help him disburse his 425,000,000 pounds to orphanages in my local area?

I had a good laugh over this. He greeted me by my first name on the phone and used it in the subject line of the email to fool me into thinking we knew one another.
His email appealed to both greed and a sense of compassion geared to helping the orphans. This is a brilliant move, especially with the added twist of phone contact for that personal touch.

It leaves me to wonder how does a poor, liverless priest with HIV get that kind of money?

And as my husband noted, he may not have a liver, “but he sure has guts.”