[OT] What Wierdness is in *your* inbox?

[I'm A Banana]

Ah, the Postal Service. A worldwide company dedicated to getting things from one house to another. Dedicated, hard-working, these men and women make sure your package gets from point A to point B without being severely interrupted, jostled, or ruined.

And then there's the electronic version, a series of letters sent quickly and without fail through the stream of 1's and 0's that make our modern lives so interesting.

And sometimes, wires get crossed. Packages get misplaced. And wierd stuff starts popping up in the most unexpected places.

I start this thread to compile some of the wierdest crap that people get in the mail. Snail or electronic, packages or letters, someone somewhere probably has sent you something bizarre.

I don't need so much reporting on the p0rn-spam, or the chain letters that will make you die, or the "Bill Gates will pay $.05 for every name here!!!111" type stuff. Nor do I need another "I was born tragically without a body, please help me to get better, THIS IS TRUE, THIS IS NOT A LIE!" stuff.

What I want is the truly bizzarre. Perhaps variations on the above themes, or somesuch. I'll post what sparked me to write this thread first...but I want to know...what kind of wierdness have you guys seen flow through our good postal/e-postal services?

 

[I'm A Banana]

For your viewing pleasure, I present an e-mail with lots of leagalspeak and it seems to be offering me money to hold some money of theirs in my bank account. Tcha.

DEPARTMENT OF PETROLEUM RESOURCES
PLOT 225 KOFO ABAYOMI STREET VICTORIA ISLAND,LAGOS, NIGERIA.
DIRECT FAX: 234 1 7590904 TEL; 234 1- 75 91519
ATTENTION: THE PRESIDENT/C.E.O
RE: URGENT & CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL

Dear Sir,

I am MR SADIKU YUSUF,member committee of the above department
Terms of Reference
My term of reference involves the award of contracts to multinational companies.
My office is saddled with the responsibility of contract award,
screening, categorization and prioritization of projects embarked upon by Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) as well as feasibility studies for selected projects and supervising the project consultants involved. A breakdown of the fiscal expenditure by this office as at the end of last fiscal quarter of 2000 indicates that DPR paid out a whooping sum of US$736M(Seven Hundred And Thirty Six Million, United States Dollars) to successful contract beneficiaries. The DPR is now compiling beneficiaries to be paid for the third Quarter of 2002.
The crux of this letter is that the finance/contract department of the DPR deliberately over –invoiced the contract value of the various contracts awarded. In the course of disbursements, this department has been able to accumulate the sum of US$38.2M(Thirty-eight Million, two hundred Thousand U.S Dollars) as the over-invoiced sum. This money is currently in a suspense account of the DPR account with the Debt Reconciliation Committee (DRC). We now seek to process the transfer of this fund officially as contract payment to you as a foreign contractor, who will be fronting for us as the beneficiary of the fund. In this way we can facilitate these funds into your nominated account for possible investment abroad. We are not allowed as a matter of government policy to operate any foreign account to transfer this fund into.However, for your involvement in assisting us with this transfer into your nominated account we have evolved a sharing formula as follows:
(1) 20% for you as the foreign partner
(2) 75% for I and my colleagues
(3) 5% will be set aside to defray all incidental expenses both Locally and Internationally during the course of this transaction.

We shall be relying on your advice as regard investment of our share in any business in your country. Be informed that this business is genuine and 100% safe considering the high-power government officials involved. Send your private fax/telephone numbers. Upon your response we shall provide you with further information on the procedures. Feel free to send response by Fax or TEL; expecting your response urgently. All enquiries should be directed to the undersigned by FAX OR PHONE. Looking forward to a good business relationship with you.

Sincerely,
MR SADIKU YUSUF

So...I give up...what's going on here?

Whaddaya think? Make sense to anyone else? And maybe you guys can beat this for hubris/quirkiness.

 

[HellHound]

Most memorable spam:

Someone bought an emailing list from one of the big spam companies. He used it to send out an email asking if anyone on the list was either an alien or a scientist who knew how to make a time machine so he can travel back in time and right a great wrong that he failed to do oh so long ago...

That's right... spam for a TIME MACHINE.

Other strange mail:

I used to be the webmaster of a huge cyberpunk site ( http://www.ambient.ca/cpunk ) and would receive several emails a month asking to purchase the items I had statted on the site. Lots of them. A corporation in Jakarta wanted a quote on 40 HK MP5s, 20 MP5SDs, 10 MP5Ks and 10 HK53s. But even worse, some are asking me for guns from my Polymer Heaven website... a website dedicated to CHEAP plastic guns from the cyberpunk genre... guns that are advertised as "IMPROVED! only melts 10% of the time when fired!"

Zoinks.

 

[HellHound]

Midget - what you posted is one of the single most popular and well known spam email con games out there. It's exactly that... a Con game.

There are a LOT of police websites out there that warn about that very same email.

 

[Umbran]

Thankfully, not much weirdness, at least spam-wise.

However, one of my friends is currently having an e-mail discussion on how he attempted to use a really high-tech pen to write on butter. Better yet, the attempt succeeded.

I also know one person who recieved a shoe (a standard cheap canvas sneaker) in the mail. The oddities were that while it was addressed to him, it wasn't his shoe, nor even his size. It also wasn't in a box - the posage and address were simply pasted onto the sole of the shoe. Who needs excess packaging?

 

[Zappo]

For your viewing pleasure, I present an e-mail with lots of leagalspeak and it seems to be offering me money to hold some money of theirs in my bank account. Tcha.

So...I give up...what's going on here?

Whaddaya think? Make sense to anyone else? And maybe you guys can beat this for hubris/quirkiness.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/27243.html

HellHound - that holds nothing on me! When I was running a small D&D site, I had someone seriously ask me to sell him a wand of fear and a wand of wall of ice.

Then, I've once been offered an "Armageddon Survival Kit - You can't survive the End Days without one of these!". For 50$. I wonder what he's planning to do with the money?

 

[Ravellion]

Kiddieporn

Not so weird so far heh?

It had a NAME and ADDRESS in Nebraska I could send material to. YUUUUUCK!

Rav

 

[Greatwyrm]

Kiddieporn

Not so weird so far heh?

It had a NAME and ADDRESS in Nebraska I could send material to. YUUUUUCK!

Rav

I certainly hope you forwarded that to the proper authorities.

 

[DarkSoldier]

I have filters that send the majority of blatant pr0n to my Trash, but some stuff slips through.

I never read spam; I empty my Bulk Mail folder without looking at it, and anything that I do not expect in my Inbox gets dumped without a second glance.

On occasion, I'll get a 120+KB e-mail with a bizarre subject line, and no attachment. This is Klez, ladies and germs. (Common sense is a thing lacking these days; 1/4 of those polled have suffered the Klez worm by opening it, thinking it was something a friend had sent or free pr0n).

 

[Lizard]

I certainly hope you forwarded that to the proper authorities.

Odds are good the name and address belonged to some innocent the spammer was mad at.

In terms of my spam, I've got the time machine one, and one barely-coherent letter explaining that someone had proof of the existence of god because they could sing a song. Or something. My wife gets semi-regular updates from someone in Russia who has been chosen by God to alert the world to an upcoming asteroid strike; he has provided several dates, all of which passed without incident. Each time, he writes again to claim God decided to be merciful and grant the world just a bit more time...