{"id":374,"date":"2003-06-04T01:38:15","date_gmt":"2003-06-04T05:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2003\/06\/04\/language-jargon-envy\/"},"modified":"2003-06-04T01:38:15","modified_gmt":"2003-06-04T05:38:15","slug":"language-jargon-envy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2003\/06\/04\/language-jargon-envy\/","title":{"rendered":"Language: Jargon Envy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

[From SCIFRAUD, a mailing list about fraud in science, from a listmember with long experience with fiesty exchanges.<\/EM>] <\/P>
\n

Dear Colleagues,<\/P>
\n

I post this information in the hope of preventing any of you from falling victim to the now-famous Nigerian Scam…<\/P>
\n

Those who wish to learn how to avoid falling victim to such scammers might find instructive the website<\/A> in which the intended victim actually got money ($3.00) from the scammer… Following is the final e-mail by the intended victim:<\/P>
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      Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 17:01:58 -0800 (PST)
      From: “Kindly Contributor”
      Subject: I GOT YOUR ANSWER RIGHT HERE
      To: “ESCOBER TONY”

      Dear Mr. Anthony Obodo:<\/FONT><\/P>
\n

      1. I write to you with great sadness and a heavy heart. It is
      difficult for me to explain this to you, but the time has
      come. Hold on to your seat.

      2. Anthony, there really is no Lay-Z-Boy recliner. There’s no
      ski trip booked to Zermatt. There’s no waffle iron or big
      screen TV. I haven’t bought you a house, nor do you have
     business class bookings on British Air. There is no pending
      Western Union transfers, no visas, no cousin Harry. I am not
      Kindly Contributor. But then, you’re not Escober Tony Sankoh.
      There’s no $15 million, and I’m not getting my cut of $1.5
      million. You are not in a refugee camp, and it is highly
      unlikely that your criminal enterprise includes a pastor,
      your momma, or a shot-dead sister.<\/FONT><\/P>
\n

      3. There are only two established facts: (i) you actually
      sent me $3.00 (HA!); and (ii) you are without doubt the
      dumbest criminal on the planet. Consider your chain jerked.<\/FONT><\/P>
\n

      4. This second point is worth dwelling on given its
      incomprehensible magnitude. I cannot believe how incredibly
      stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard
      stupid. World-class, A-1, top of the heap, triple whopper
      with cheese, supersized stupid. So stupid that it goes way
      beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of
      stupid. One-of-a-kind, global, universal, intergalactic
      stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid
      collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have
      collapsed. Stupid so dense that no intellect can escape.
      Singularly, extraordinarily, incredibly, bewilderingly
      stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit
      more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a
      year. Quasar stupid. Your life is a monument to stupidity. I
      am breathless that anyone or anything in our universe can
      really be this stupid. You are a primordial fragment from the
      original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so
      uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of
      stupidity that we know. A behemoth, a leviathan, a colossus
      of stupidity.<\/FONT><\/P>
\n

      5. Given the sheer immensity of your idiocy, I cannot in good
      conscience send you back the $3.00 as requested. Instead, my
      friends and I are going out tonight to jubilate and drink
      some frosty cold beers with your money. We will celebrate the
      fact that you will go down in history as the dumbest “419”
      scammer in the history of scams.

      6. As an aside, you may be interested to know that we are
      also sending all your emails and information to the Ghana
      Police Service, the Accra police, Ministry of National
      Security, Drug Enforcement Agency, all the “Nigerian 419”
      scam web sites, the US Secret Service, the Accra newspapers
      and Interpol, along with your Mobitel cell number
      00233-2760-7048. It is our fervent hope that they will hunt
      you down like the scabby parasite-laced dog that you are, and
      shut down your criminal enterprise.<\/FONT>

      Later, you knucklehead.

      On yeah, one more thing: I ain’t your Daddy!<\/FONT><\/P>
\n


I wish I could write like that.<\/P>
\n

Cordially,
[name redacted]

<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[From SCIFRAUD, a mailing list about fraud in science, from a listmember with long experience with fiesty exchanges.] Dear Colleagues, I post this information in the hope of preventing any of you from falling victim to the now-famous Nigerian Scam… Those who wish to learn how to avoid falling victim to such scammers might find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetic-justice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-62","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}