{"id":795,"date":"2007-01-19T21:57:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-19T21:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=795"},"modified":"2007-01-19T21:57:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-19T21:57:00","slug":"the-nigerian-419-book-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=795","title":{"rendered":"The Nigerian (419) Book Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early 1980s, M. and were dues-paying members of the Fellowship of Isis–sort of a souvenir of our honeymoon in Ireland, when we made a couple of visits to Clonegal Castle, its headquarters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our contact details were published in the FOI newsletter, which brought several letters to us from Nigeria.<\/p>\n

They always took the same form: “Dear Glorious Wonderful Adepts . . . I so much want to learn blah blah blah . . . Please send me all of the books that you have . . . for free.”<\/p>\n

Having received a bunch of these letters, I was pretty well inoculated against the “419 scam<\/a>.” You get those emails too, I am sure: the widow of the minister of something-or-other who has millions of dollars stashed in a bank account, and only you<\/b> (or some other sucker<\/a>) can help her retrieve them, with the help of God, of course. <\/p>\n

(Lots of sample letters here<\/a>, and if you want to have a little fun scamming the scammers, here are some helpful hints<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So it was a blast from the past when Llewellyn<\/a> forwarded to me this week a letter from one “Mr. Inemesit Sanctum” (if I read correctly) of Abia State, Nigeria.<\/p>\n

It begins “Dear Spiritual Don,” I wonder if he means “Don” in the Spanish\/Italian sense, as in “Don Giovanni,” or an Oxbridge academic “don.” Perhaps the latter?<\/p>\n

My edited book Living Between Two Worlds<\/i><\/a> “opened his eyes” blah blah blah.<\/p>\n

“I never knew that witchcraft could be so exciting and unassociated with the typical diabolism which I used to be told, which caused me a great dread of it.”<\/p>\n

Etc. etc. etc. And then the pitch:<\/p>\n

“Finally, to cool my thirst, send me such books as [lists four titles from the Llewellyn catalog]. Doing this will give me and my yearning friends hope to climb the strange but exciting spiritual ladder.”<\/p>\n

No mention of payment, of course. That’s the Nigerian touch. They never even offer to cover postage.<\/p>\n

And the closing: “Yours spiritually.”<\/p>\n

Ah, nostalgia. A handwritten begging letter in this day of email 419 scams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the early 1980s, M. and were dues-paying members of the Fellowship of Isis–sort of a souvenir of our honeymoon in Ireland, when we made a couple of visits to Clonegal Castle, its headquarters. Our contact details were published in the FOI newsletter, which brought several letters to us from Nigeria. They always took the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[7,22],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-publishing","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-cP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":419,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=419","url_meta":{"origin":795,"position":0},"title":"Domestic Rites of the 21st Century CE","author":"Chas S. 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Clifton","date":"December 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Edward Skidelsky nails it: the smarmy bureaucratic coercion of the word \"inappropriate\".From Arts & Letters Daily, in the blogroll.","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1461,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1461","url_meta":{"origin":795,"position":4},"title":"What Do Philosophers Believe?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A brief piece from The Economist's More Intelligent Life site leads off with this nugget of alleged airplane-seat conversation: \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m a philosopher.\u201d \u201cWhat are some of your sayings, then?\u201d Read the whole thing. 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