419ers recruit asylum-seeking mortician

Anyone who is currently reading El Reg in the rec room of an illegal immigrants' secure facility in the Home Counties in the hope that it might contain more useful pointers as to how to forge a UK ID card will certainly sympathise with the plight of poor old Liz Toon - Senegalese mortician on the edge:

From: elizabeth_toon@swissinfo.org
To: elizabeth_toon@swissinfo.org
Subject: PLEASE REPLY
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 01:33:23 +0000

Good day.

I hope this does not come to you as a surprise, since we have never meet before. I am Mrs. Elizabeth Toon a mortician living in London.

I hereby write this mail to ask for you help on a matter of which I think is of good importance to me and also on which I happen to be helpless.

Recently I recieve a notice from an attorney here in London who made me to understand that I have inherited a sum from a late priest who used to be the morgue priest who did all prayer for the dead. This priest had been sent on transfer since last year to a place which I know not. Its is only through the attorney's notice that I am aware of his death. This attorney made me to understand that all I needed to do was to present my identification and passport in order for the inheritance forms to be processed and the inheritance procedure starts immediately. Because of this I seek your help due to the fact that I happen to me a senegalese and also an illegal immigrant seeking asylum here in London, so with this I cannot present my papers to the attorney because I have none.

So I beg for you help to collect this sum of money as the attorney tell me that I have less than one month to claim it. I would be very grateful and happy if you can pesent your identification in my place and collect this money, I have told attorney that someone can help me collect this money on my behalf and he agreed to assist.

Let me ask for a favour, I am a poor God fearing person and this money means a lot to me and my peasant family back home in senegal at least if I get the money I can get legal resident papers for myself, please I am putting my hope in your hands because I have no idea of how these things works and I hope i can trust you not to dissapoint me or leave with the money. The money is US$750,000 and i will give you some when you ghelp me collect it.

Please let me know when you get this letter so that i can give you the lawyer's contact, as he is await my soonest response. And I would also beg for your patience in my late reply of any of your mail, this is because I have very small access to the internet and this my email is hard to open here so you can reply at another email which open easy: elizabeth_toon@mail.com

Thank you for your patience and understanding. And also bear with my english, is poor.

God bless you.

Elizabeth.

Hmmm. We're not sure that Liz's story stands up to close scrutiny. The priest's "transfer" is just a little too convenient, and it's far more likely that Ms Toon simply murdered the poor bloke herself and dismembered the corpse before dissolving it in acid and flushing the resultant sludge down the lav - along with the passport she needed to claim the loot he spirited out of Liberia aboard a Red Cross flight shortly after the untimely death of president Charles Taylor.

In any case, the idea of buying British citizenship for $750,000 is outrageous. You'll need a lot more than that, love, and if you don't believe us just ask Harrods supremo Mohammed al Fayed. A much better bet is to forget the cash and brush up on your running or tennis skills. It worked for Zola Budd and Greg Rusedski. ®

Bootnote

A hearty cheers to reader Nick Peltekakis for this nice example of the 419 genre.

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