Gimme spam!!

I’m probably one of only a handful of people who enjoy getting spam. The email kind, not the canned meat.

While both can be nasty, scammers can be fun if you like playing with idiots who think plying their con games on the Internet is fun.

For more than three years I have been corresponding with scammers from a score of countries and find it quite interesting to see what motivates them. Well, actually, what motivates them is easy: Money. But hooking them into a scheme of my choosing can be more fun that braiding a box of multi-hued hair.

The most interesting thing about foreign scammers is that they do not know much about American culture, television icons, holidays or religions. I have related how I could not send money on a certain day because of the National Sucker Day Observances, or how I had to meet with Pastor Ernest Borgnine of the Hairy Nest Pentacostal Church in Janehathaway, Arkansas to discuss my ‘truss” fund.

They believe me when I relate how I was injured in an accident involving a mini-van of lawyers going to a Tort Convention, or de-legged by a runaway auger drilling for corn oil, or how I went to the circus and a clown car jumped the railing and whopped the crowd.

They believe my daughter is named Vienna Sousage Smith or Dorito Chippette Smith or Suzette Smith Saliva, and my Swedish nurse is Gotchme Bigguns, and my business secretary is Pepito Bismol.

All they care about is getting some money for myriad reasons – usually shipping a truckload of jewels or security bonds, or valuable coins, bank transfer information.

Occasionally, a sick scammer claims to have died, and their barrister/lawyer takes up the cause. Countering with my own lawyer – Duke Wayne, Sonny Bono, Henry Winkler, et al – is a good way keep an even playing field.

Do I ever receive anything from the scammers? One day the mail brought in more than $385,000 in fraudulent money orders – in $2,000 and $3,000 demoninations – from Wal-Mart, Circle K and some convenience store chain from the Northeast. I notified the FBI and the nice lady agent to whom I reported the scam was not enthusiastic. She advised me to burn the money orders.

I am planning on handing them out as party favors at some point in the future.

Over the past year or so I have received checks in various amounts -- $196,000, $52,538, $98,000 – and all are official checks on real companies. In every instance, they could be cashed with no questions asked … until law officers showed up at your door with engraved handcuffs.

The “hook” for the scammers is that they want you to deposit the checks and send them anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of the deposited money, which you are supposed to transfer to a foreign bank. And, you keep the rest for your trouble.

Simple. And illegal.

It is estimated that more than $3 billion a year is bilked from U.S. citizens from such scams.

If the scammers would just learn who Ernest Borgnine was or know that Milburn Drysdale was a TV character, not a real banker, think how much more time they would have to skim more money from their greedy targets.

As for those $2,000 and $3,000 fraudulent money orders? I am planning on handing them out as party favors at some point in the future.