Army scammer? Let's check the grammar
I've received my first Nigerian-style dubious-money-transfer-scheme-assistance
solicitation email
purporting to come not from an African widow but from a fellow countryman:
a soldier serving as an attaché in Iraq. "Hello Pal, he
says very informally (too much so?): "My name is Sgt. Jarvis Reeves Jr.
I am a military attache with the Engineering unit here in Ba'qubah Iraq
for the United States, we have about $14 Million dollars that we want
to move out of the country." Always ready to help our brave men
and women in uniform, Sgt. Reeves; but first
we're going to do a little grammatical analysis on your message
to make sure you're not just another illiterate foreign scammer.
Here's the full text of the message:
From jmrjr009@bellsouth.net Tue Jan 23 11:27:55 2007
Return-path:
Delivery-date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 11:27:55 -0800
X-Mailer: Openwave WebEngine, version 2.8.16.1 (webedge20-101-1106-101-20040924)
X-Originating-IP: [80.88.141.73]
From: Jarvis Reeves Jr
Reply-To: jmrjr008@yahoo.dk
To:
Subject: can I trust you?
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:25:34 -0500
Message-Id: <20070123192534.KLBQ26200.ibm60aec.bellsouth.net@mail.bellsouth.net>
Hello Pal,
I need of your assistance. My name is Sgt. Jarvis Reeves Jr. I am a
military attache with the Engineering unit here in Ba'qubah Iraq for the
United States, we have about $14 Million dollars that we want to move
out of the country.
My partners and I need a good partner someone we can trust to actualize
this venture.The money is from oil proceeds and legal.But we are moving
it through diplomatic means to your house directly or a safe and secured
location of your choice using diplomatic courier services.
But can we trust you? Once the funds get to you, you take your 30% out
and keep our own 70%. Your own part of this deal is to find a safe place
where the funds can be sent to. Our own part is sending it to you.
If you are interested I will furnish you with more details.
Awaiting your urgent response.
Your Buddy.
Sgt Jarvis Reeves
God Bless America!!!!!!
God bless America indeed, with six exclamation marks to add
to her 50 stars and 13 bars. But, Jarvis (may I call you Jarvis?),
I think we have a problem. Well, quite a few problems,
actually. Let's count them up (I won't bother to try and segregate the
grammatical points from lexical or punctuational or other suspicious
errors):
- An attaché is an officer working in an embassy,
not a sergeant serving in an Army unit.
- You're with "the engineering unit"?
That is not the way Army engineers talk. They'd name a battalion or
a company or something. There isn't just one engineering unit.
- Why are you mailing from Yahoo in Denmark (jmrjr008@yahoo.dk) if
you're a sergeant serving with my country's military in Iraq?
R&R in Copenhagen? Who's looking after the money?
- Pal should not be capitalized.
- I need of your assistance is ungrammatical.
- we have about $14 Million dollars is the start of a bad
run-on sentence.
- Million should not be capitalized.
- The word dollars is redundant since you have "$".
- The phrase need a good partner someone we can
trust is
an even worse run-on (not even a comma).
- The sequence "legal.But" should have a space.
Omitting space at places where there is a parenthesis or a punctuation
mark is the hallmark of a person with too little education to rise
above the rank of private. You have several other occurrences of the
same thing.
- The money is "from oil proceeds and legal"? Even allowing that
oddly disjointed coordination of source and status descriptions,
how did a sergeant come to have access to legally earned
money from an oil company's bank account?
- Moving the money "through diplomatic means"? There is
something slightly wrong about through (with which one
expects a path) and means (which connotes an instrument):
by would be more normal here. And are you suggesting
that as an Army sergeant you get access to the diplomatic bag?
Wouldn't your normal means be something more like an Army
post office?
- The phrase to your house directly or a safe and secured
location of your choice is not grammatical (the adjunct directly
modifies the verb moving but illicitly
interrupts the coordinate structure
to your house or a safe and secured location of your choice).
- The phrase you take your 30% out and keep our own 70% is ill-phrased: it sounds like I keep all the money. You mean "hold for our
collection" rather than "keep".
- Awaiting your urgent response is an ugly ill-placed modifier:
I think you mean
Urgently awaiting your response.
- The period after Your Buddy is wrong: you don't
use a period after the "Yours" line before the signature.
- Buddy should not be capitalized.
- Both Hello Pal and Your Buddy sound like Army usage as imagined
by someone who has seen Second World War movies and Hogan's Heroes episodes
but has not interacted with the military. Real soldiers tend to be
rather formal when addressing people they don't know; they say "Sir" rather than "Pal".
So, let's face it: you're not really U.S. Army at all, are
you, "Sergeant Jarvis Reeves Jr."?
In the original version of this post I suggested that perhaps
you were a Danish hacker who didn't learn his grammar
well enough to be a convincing spam-scammer, but then
someone showed me* that showmyip.com would
permit me to check on you by the very simple device of pointing
my browser at
http://www.showmyip.com/?ip=80.88.141.73. And guess what: you're actually in Nigeria, Jarvis!
With a Danish zombie address (John Cowan reports to me
that it only took him a few tries and he had one too; it is
free, it is easy to sign up, and to start sending an email
from the new account you hit the button marked Skriv).
Well, Jarvis, now your email address has been shown
on Language Log, and every Language Log reader in the world is going
to email you and pretend they want to help your transfer the money.
Only Language Log readers are smart, and they won't send the advance
fees you will tell them they need to pay. They will just play you
like a fish on a line and waste your time.
*Thanks to Hao Wang for the tip.
Thanks also to John Cowan, Michael Andresen, and Jim
Gordon.
Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum at January 26, 2007 01:10 AM