The Scammer

Very often, we get correspondence at our office, I'm sure like most of you, from someone in Africa, Egypt, Rome, Asia, Endonowhere, needing us to act as their intermediary. They always want to send us some money to hold for them....Just for a little while...You know, usually, their dead, rich, retired uncle can't hold it in his account, but they trust a LAWYER of all things to hold their money, without any written agreement or understanding.... A few months back, my husband's niece sent me an emergency email that she was being held in London, had lost her passport, could not get out unless I wired her some money. Funny thing was, my niece was sitting in the office next door to me when I got the email, so I saved some pennies, whew! The sad thing is that I actually had a lady call me a few weeks back and she had fallen victim to a scammer and lost $60,000.00 hard earned American Dollars. Although my heart ached painfully for the lady, the FBI quickly let her know that they had large stacks of similar scams and that the hope of finding the transgressor was small to none. My post takes into account that there are some sad stories out there and for those people, I am truly sadded. Today, the scam hit close to home for me. I received an email from an Asian lady last week asking me to help her get money from her ex husband. Her physician husband was ordered to pay her close to $900,000.00 in alimony in China. Of all places, her husband had fled to Huntsville, Alabama and she thought I was the perfect one to help. It seems that by researching all about me on the internet and visiting my website one time, she was certain that I was the best lawyer she could hire to go after her ex for non payment of alimony; She was even more certain that her ex-husband would be so scared of me that he would send me money immediately without the need of litigation. Seems the word lawyer is that scary. Well, sure enough, today, bright and early, the UPS man shows up with a cashier check from Chase for $480,000.00.....The letter stated that he could only come up with half and that he would get the remainder to me within 60 days. My new found friend from China emailed and told me to go ahead and take out 10% of the entire amount and wire her the remainder.....LOL....That would be have been so nice, I think 48,000.00 would have bought me several Alabama football tickets...I digress. Of course, the check was fake. The emails from my nice client became much more forceful and I assured her that she would get the exact amount from me that I was given by her ex. Get this: Her ex husband was in Huntsville, the cashiers check and envelope came from Texas, and the return address was Canada. Bottom line: Be careful. Scammers are everywhere....if something is too good to be true, it generally is. I have assured my new friend that the same amount will be coming to her that I received (I guess she hasn't taken into account that the amount is zero; I told her my momma taught me to be generous and that I beleived she had been taken advantage of by the Huntsville doctor long enough and that I was going to not charge her a penny. She was pleased. I'll take suggestions as to what my correspondence should be to her/him/it tomorrow. I hope the person high fiving because they "scammed" me is the same person involved in scamming that little old lady I could not help.