A Turn for the Worse.

Since I wrote about the internet scams a couple of weeks ago I have had a further SEVEN such e-mails.
Sadiq Mussa, Al-Abdullah Mohami, Madawi Atassi, Arik Bello and a Mr Albarte (aka Mr Alberte) have each separately approached me about large sums of money tied-up in a bank account which can be released if someone like me makes an application through them to claim the money. The total sum of these seven e-mails comes to $82.9 million (or £52.2m) not included in the amount previously quoted. Added together they all come up to a grand total of $126.5 million!
One of the scams is about a "Free Lotto" win - notification of winning.

There is one other scam which deserves some attention because it purports to come from a fellow Christian. "Mrs Celin Jonah" of Cote D'Ivoire explains that her wealthy husband has died and she has recently had a stroke. She is concerned that their money is used to serve Christ through charitable work. There are quotes from the Bible and pious language used which under normal circumstances would help to get this under the discernment "radar".
A few years ago I received a similar e-mail and although I thought that it was "iffy" I did genuinely wonder if I should make some sort of response. As a Christian I HAD to ask myself if this was someone genuinely asking for help, albeit in a rather artless sort of way. I puzzled over that one for a few days and not without a crisis of conscience I decided to ignore it.
But that is the cruel nature of such scams - sometimes they are quite crude, but a "good" one is like a 'smart bomb' which homes in on some aspect of one's psychology and gets under the skin. Most appeal to naked greed but this one uses one's faith in Christ as a means of leverage. It is cynical and exploitative of one's natural desire to help - that's why it is especially wicked.