It appears our report last week on the death of the great 419 email may have been somewhat premature.

In fact, apologies are in order for the suggestion that advance fee fraudsters had lost the creative edge which had seemingly guaranteed them immortality in the pantheon of spammers. Try this, hot from the inbox:

Subject: DR H. SHIPMAN KILLED OUR CLIENT, I NEED YOUR HELP

Sir/madam

This might come suden and suprising to you, knowing too well that we have now initial contact. iam Mr Benson Tito an auditor to a finance and security company in madrid spain where a the sum of $16million usd was deposited by one 67yrs old Mrs Maria Quinn a Briton for safe keep, but in the year 2002 one Dr Harold Shipman a personal physitian to our client Mrs M Quinn came with a death certificate or our client and changed the ownership of the deposit to him self back with affidavits from uk court.We made our investigation and dicovered that it was the truth that mrs m quinn is late, but what we fail to find out was that Dr Harold Shipman was the killer of our client,this fact only came out when Dr H. Shipman was jailed for serial killing by the british government and the subsiquent hanging of him self in jail few days ago. In the light of my finding and discovery the funds in question is still in our vault with out owner. I will therefore solicite your assistance to claim this fund the partner to dr shipman, all legal document will be obtained to fasilitate the transfer of the funds to your nominated account or we can pay it to you in cash from our vault at the end of the day we will share the fund on fifty fifty (50/50%)bases respond immediately yours faithfully

Mr Benson Tito

Yup, move over Charles Taylor of Liberia and enter Harold Shipman, late of Hyde and HMP Wakefield. Terrific stuff and a blinding return to form by the Boys from Lagos/Madrid. Olé! ®

Bootnote

Muchas gracias to reader Stuart Wallace for alerting us to Shipman's Iberian shennanigans.

Related link about Britain's worst serial killer

The Guardian: Special Report about Harold Shipman