I'm Going to be Rich!

Dear, I am in need of your assistance. My name is Sgt Justin Harris. I am in the Engineering military unit here in Ba'qubah in Iraq, we have about US$25 Million US dollars that we want to move out of the country. My partners and I need a good partner someone we can trust. It is oil money and legal. We are
moving it through diplomatic means, to send it to your house directly or a bank of your choice using diplomatic courier service they can ship it directly to you in your place, door to door delivery. The most important thing is that can we trust you? Once the funds get to you, you take your 50% out and keep our own 50%. Your own part of this deal is to find a safe place where the funds can be sent to. Our own part is sending it to you. If you are interested i will furnish you with more details. But the whole process is simple and we must keep a low profile at all times.Can i trust you and will you help? Send me an email with your positive reply and i will send you more details and the plan. Dont worry it is risk free. Waiting for your
urgent response. Your Army in Iraq. Sgt Justin Harris

justinharris01@swarmail.com

Dear Sgt. Harris,

First, let me tell you that I'm flattered that you call me 'dear.' I mean, we hardly know each other. Also, I'm not into dudes, so let's keep this on a professional level.

Let me congratulate you on your good fortune. Stationed as an officer in Iraq, and you've managed to make $25 million in oil? Legally? That's amazing! Are all engineers this smart?

So, let me get this straight. You want to ship me $25 million? Do you know how heavy that would be? You'd have to send it in a pallet, I think, and customs would definitely look into that. I think it'd make more sense to transfer it to a Swiss account, but then again, you're the engineer!

Of course you can trust me. Isn't that why you sent me this unsolicited email? You could trust me to retrieve it from the junk folder, why not trust me with your money?

And finally, I appreciate you assurance that this is a risk-free proposition. I'm not a risk-taker by nature, but if I can't trust a member of our armed forces, what assurances could possibly convince me?

I'm in.

Let me know how I can help.


Your Pal,

The Idea of Progress

Short Spam Fiction, by "Josiah Perry"

Who helped you? She was highly Colin had an astonished expres And the percentages? Colin ask She shrugged. Anyone with half He shook his head. But youre a He was going to add that he co I knew that would come up, she Colin had never seen her this Caine came to her rescue. And Yes, she did, Alesandra answer Colin let out a snort. Ill wag Shall we get back to our reaso Yes, of course. Caine took the I believe we should go ahead a Caine unfolded the sheet of pa Get started, son, his father i The first name on the list is Yes, but Ive scratched him off

The Idea Of Progress Strikes it Rich!

(Text in bold actually received on Tuesday. Text in bold has been reprinted exactly, with all spelling and grammatical errors preserved)

Attention Sir,

My Name is Dr. Fouad Mazen,I am the chief accountant with the Nigeria Mines and steel co-operation(NMSC) After due deliberation with my colleagues and the official of The U.S Federal Reserve Bank in Nigeria, we decided to forward this proposal to you.

This guy sounds serious. He's a doctor. He and his colleagues have been discussing me? The official of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank in Nigeria knows who I am? I must be more important than I realized.

We actually want a reliable person who could assist us to transfer the sum of Eighteen Million Five Hundred United States Dollars (US$18.5m) into his account.This fund resulted from an over-invoiced bill from contract awarded by Nigeria Mines and Steel Co-operation under the budget allocation to the ministry and the bill was approved for payment by the concerned ministries.

The contract has been executed, commissioned and the contractor had since been paid the actual cost of the contract.We are left with the balance of US$18.5m as part of the over-invoiced amount,which we have deliberately over estimated for our own use. I am contacting you to be our custodian of this fund.

1) 30% for you (Account Owner)
2) 70% for us.

Soooo...that's not $18.5m, it's $18.0005m. I understand Dr. Mazen will be hooking me up with 30% of that ($5,400,150 (my math) or $5,550,000 (his math), so I guess I should stop complaining.

Phew! And it's a good thing that work actually got done, or I'd have felt guilty.

Upon reciept of this mail if you are intrested in assisting over this transfer you are hereby adviced to forward the following information inorder for me to start every other documentations in approving the payment of the fund into your account .

1) Your Full Names and Address.
2) Your Telephone and Fax Number
3)Your Bank Account Details.
4)Your Bank Address.
5)Your Bank Telephone/Fax numbers and Telex if available.



Ah, my Telex. I'll just send word back to you via Pony Express. Oh, and you say that I should just go ahead and give you my bank account details on this first communique? Not a problem, Dr. I'll send it to you by carrier pigeon.

As you may want to know and to make you less curious, I got your address from a business directory that portrayed your establishment in good light. This transaction is 100% risk-free and devoid of any Trouble from my Government. We have been exercising patience for this opportunity forso long and to most of us this is a life opportunity we cannot afford to miss.To get this fund paid into your account, we have to present a foreign establishment like yours.

Oh, so that's how they found me. I thought I had quite the reputation in Nigeria, but apparently not. At least this transaction is 100% risk free. Now I can sleep at night. And the Nigerians seem to be cool with giving me $5,400,150 or $5,550,000. And I can sure use the money. I'm ready to go into some sort of business for myself...I just can't figure out which one.

My colleagues in this deal and myself will come to your Country to arrange for our share upon confirmation from you that the money has been credited into your nominated Bank Account. Our intention is to go into real estate, and the intention is you take us along, since we are not indigenes.Upon your acceptance of my proposal, do confirm your sincere interest by mail through my email to enable me give you the detailed procedure for the transfer.It will surprise you why we chose and trusted you for this transaction as we believe that good friends can be discovered and business like this cannot be realized without trust.

They're going to trust me to hold the money until they get here? That's a lot of responsibility. And they want to get into real estate? Maybe I can finance giant new condo buildings with my new friends, Dr. Mazan and Colleagues!

And they're right. This can't be done without trust.

However,it is pertinent to note that Honesty,sincerity and confidentiality must be our watchword.
We look forward to doing business with you.
Best Regards

Dr.FOUAD MAZEN (CHIEF ACCOUNTANT).
DIRECT LINE+234-808-277-1977

Dude even gave me his phone number. How does he know I won't call him up drunk one night to complain about my ex-girlfriend, or ask to crash on his couch? Trust, that's how.

He asked me to keep this a secret, but since I view all readers of The Idea Of Progress as colleagues, well, it's only right to share my good fortune with you.

I'll let you know when my condos go up for sale.


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I've thought about emailing this guy back. I got he idea from a play that was performed in Chicago called Nigerian Spam Scam Scam. An actor named Dean Cameron got a letter like I did, and decided to start emailing the guy back, adopting the persona of a sexually ambiguous eccentric Florida millionare that dotes over his cats Mister Snickers and Joe Joe the Dancing Clown. He took the actual transcripts of the conversations and performed them as a two person show (The transcripts are available on the site). Unfortunately I missed the show, but it sounds really funny.

Maybe I can have a show with Dr. Mazen.

The Court, The Thief, and the Past

The makeup of the Supreme Court has changed. I wouldn't begin to refer to it in the recent past as a liberal court or a conservative one, but one that was evenly divided down the middle, with a couple of justices who could only be counted on to surprise. Personally, I'd like a very liberal court, but perhaps it was in the best interests of everyone in the country to have a court that most resembled us.

Since Bush came into office and has been able to get two justices on it, the makeup has changed dramatically, and you could almost hear the audible cry of relief from the Christian conservatives and the far right. I wouldn't want to unfairly characterize Justices Alito and Roberts, but since they've voted predictably and in unison for everything I thought they would I'm just going to assume they're both jackasses. Even Scalia (who's kind of a nut job) occasionally will surprise you. He's no parrot, just someone with his own set of beliefs, however woefully misguided.

The Last Woman Standing, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seems to have had enough. In today's New York Times there is an article about how she has taken to orally dissenting from the bench. This goes against her generally quiet, follow the rules type of demeanor, but according to a friend of hers, this shows how she feels that the court has become politicised with it's recent changes. Not like anyone who has been paying attention to the court recently would have thought otherwise, but it's nice to know that she's grown a pair, so to speak.


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One of the world's biggest spammers has been caught. Seems that Robert Alan Soloway has been hacking into other peoples' computers and using them to send out spam that advertised that he could send out advertisements, etc. He's considered one of the top 10 spammers in the world, according to the AP. I don't know what kind of punishment is appropriate for this guy, but whatever it is, I hope it's annoying and tedious.


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I found these a week ago, and just thought they were amusing, so I've been holding on to them. These are apparently real ads from yesteryear. It's too bad that irony has pervaded every facet of existance, because honest things like this are so much funnier when they are unaware of themselves.









Courtesy of Ads of the World.