Recently on Facebook, an attractive young woman – or so I judge from the picture accompanying her message – asked me to accept her as a Facebook friend. She assures me that she’s positively enthralled with the messages that I regularly post at that social-media site. And so she really, really wants to get to know me better. (Hint! Hint!) How lucky I am, a man in his mid-60s, to catch the eye and spark the interest of a beautiful young woman! Who knows what delights await me if I befriend her?!
This “friend request” reminded me of the many e-mails that I (like many others) have received over the years promising me instant riches in exchange for helping some third-world-country innocent person escape injustice. For kicks, I saved one of these e-mails that dates back to November of 2011. Marked “URGENT,” it’s from one Mitchell Joy. Although I’d never before heard of Mr. Joy, he wrote to me from his home in Ghana with assurances that he knows me to be a man of impeccable character. Mr. Joy, unfortunately, was in desperate need of my help. But he would make it worth my while. He assured me that together we could both be of great benefit to each other.
Mr. Joy, you see, very tragically had recently lost his saintly father, Coleman, who was a successful and upstanding businessman worth tens of millions of US dollars. But Ghana’s nefarious government threatened to block Mr. Joy’s access to Papa Coleman’s money. Mr. Joy was of course desperate to get these funds out of Ghana ASAP before they would be confiscated from him and his family and lost to them forever.
That’s where I was to come in. Having been assured by certain nameless worthies of my integrity, Mr. Joy wanted to use my US bank account as the escape vehicle for his $25 million. All I had to do was to send to Mr. Joy my bank’s name and routing number, and my checking-account number. Within days $25 million would have been deposited therein, half of which I was to transfer to Mr. Joy when he arrived in the US sometime in the next year. I was to keep the remaining $12.5 million, as just payment for my goodness and willingness to trust and assist Mr. Joy.
What a deal! I’d become rich as I promoted justice by keeping the Ghanaian government’s greedy paws off of assets that rightfully belonged to Mitchell Joy and his kin.
I would have used my $12.5 million to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. It was, I was assured, for sale.
Although the frequency of receipt of such e-mails has trailed off in recent years, they still arrive from time to time. And while the details of the schemes to separate me from my money differ from e-mail to e-mail, the writers of each of these messages claim to be champions of righteousness who, if I join their cause, will materially enrich me.
Obviously, it doesn’t remotely dawn on me that “Mr. Joy” is anything…
Read More: ‘You Can Trust Me’: Catfishers, Nigerian Princes, and Political Hucksters
