The other day, I received an email that set my imagination ablaze. It indicated that I might be going to get some sort of large, unexpected financial windfall and who wouldn鈥檛 get excited about that.
Here is the email almost verbatim to give you the gist of it: 鈥淕reetings, Walt. Did you receive the document I sent through post office/cargo, regarding the claim of the abandoned financial assets as you are the sole beneficiary. If you didn鈥檛 receive it, reply on my email. Regards Mark B Esq.鈥�
Now with a national postal strike on, that might be the reason why I haven鈥檛 gotten the documents yet. They could be sitting in some sorting facility somewhere gathering dust. However, it must be a mighty big document to require cargo status.
The email says I am the sole beneficiary and that sounds rather exciting. For some reason, my imagination leapt to the possibility that I might inherit a castle in England, Scotland or Wales. Maybe a villa on the Mediterranean or a mansion and estate in the tropics. I think my imagination went a little wild due to too many Christmas movies too soon 鈥� along with the cold, gloomy weather.
So, I reread the email a couple times. Unfortunately, there was no mention of real estate or property, but just abandoned financial assets (money鈥� money鈥oney). If a bank account has no activity for over seven years and the bank can鈥檛 locate the owner, the accounts move to the abandoned category.
So maybe, some long lost acquaintance or relative of mine had vanished and left my name as the inheritor of his dormant bank accounts, and with any luck, maybe a safety deposit box or two. People do go missing and just disappear. They could get lost at sea or lost in the bush. They could get abducted by aliens or fall down an unused well. During a lifetime, you meet or work with a lot of people. Maybe one of them leaves a note: 鈥淚f I go missing, I leave my assets to Walt." It is improbable but possible.
The email was sent by an Esq. In the USA and Canada, lawyers often use that title for their written communications, and in England an esquire is used as a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly of the landed gentry above the rank of gentlemen and below the rank of knight. These are theoretically people you can trust.
In the email, the syntax is off a little but maybe English is his second, third or forth language. That might explain things and with money involved, I didn鈥檛 want to be too judgmental, especially as I was the sole beneficiary.
On the other hand, this could just be one big scam, where the desire for a windfall overpowers one鈥檚 common sense. I am thinking that when the postal strike is over, the documents probably won鈥檛 arrive because they don鈥檛 exist. The scammer is hoping to hook people using the postal strike as a bit of the bait story. Probably if I did send an email, out of pure curiosity, he would want to know my banking information so he could get his own windfall of my money.
Scammers are smart and they know that if they send out enough bogus emails like this, they will get a few people hooked. Greed often outweighs common sense. That鈥檚 why and how scams work. What puzzles me a little is why scams like this and others aren鈥檛 deemed illegal and the culprits tracked down and prosecuted. Actually, they are illegal, but not a whole lot is being done to stop them or round up the scammers who should be sent to "scammers prison" in some place really unpleasant without access to the internet.
