Jericho: Spammers

I know, we all get plenty of spam. At this point, calling unwanted, junk email "Spam" is an insult to the canned, pork product. I like Spam a hell of a lot more than I like spam.

I have a fascination with the garbage email that collects in my various accounts. I used to get all kinds of great XXX spam, with pics and everything. Now, I mostly get stuff for watch replicas and penis enlargement. I read far too many of these things.

The other day I got one that just left me giggling. This one is a variation on the classic Nigerian Finance Minister scam, but it may actually be worse. At the very least, it's worse in concept.

I won't print out the full email here, but the thing starts off as follows:

From The Desk Of
Mr Teo Ming Kian Chairman,
Matsushita Semiconductor

We here in the States probably haven't heard of Matsushita, we do know their brands: Panasonic, Quasar and Technics. Mr. Kian is indeed a chairman - of the Economic Development Board of Singapore. As far as I can tell, he has nothing to do with Matsushita. The email is also from a terra.es address, not matsushita.com, or even matsushita.sg - nope, some portal in Spain.

The email goes on to say:

Matsushita is a Global manufactural of Gray market goods,and this are items manufactured abroad and imported into the US without the consent of the trademark holder. Examples of such goods are REFRIGERATORS of all kinds,Electronics and Home Appliances.

It's about here I totally lost it! Gray market goods? So you want me to help you import Gray market goods, past my own government? I just don't think the profit margin on microwave ovens would be high enough for me to risk my neck! After I investigated a little and found out Matsushita was Panasonic, this was even funnier! Are they telling me they are stealing the trademarks for some other Asian made product and selling it here illegally? Why not just mark it Panasonic and sell it legally?

I scanned the rest of the email to see if there was any more hilarity. They essentially wanted me to put together an "outlet" for their wares. Even if I wanted to go into the small electronics biz, competing with the local big box stores, there is no way I would want to sell "gray market" goods, when I could get legal goods for half the trouble! Maybe if they were giving them to me free ...

They wanted my info, like name and contact info. I'm sure if I responded, they would then try to get me to pay for a shipment of goods that would never arrive, or some other similar scam. I'm not too smart, but I am too smart for all that jazz.

The really SCARY thing is that this type of scam has been around since at least the 1920s! Apparently it's quite successful or people would stop trying it. If you want a laugh at the expense of the scammers, check out Scam-O-Rama ...