Crime and Punishment, by Michael Davis – Straight No Chaser #111

April 10, 2009 Michael Davis 0 Comments

I received the following to one of my email addresses. I’m reprinting it here as it was sent to me typos and all:

ATTENTION TO THE OWNER OF THIS EMAIL ADDRESS

Winner in the 2nd category of our DELOTTO free Net Lottery Promotional award draws held in December

2007. I am writing in respect to your lotto winning prize of ONE MILLION, EUROS (1,000,000.00 euros) which you won through the email ballot draws in the EUROMILLION Promotional Award in December 2007 in the second category prize winnings category.

We wish to inform you that your total prize money Of 1. 000,000.00 Euros has remained unpaid by our treasury and credit office after the initial letter to your address for your payment was not successful.

You are hereby requested to contact your Syndicate claims process agent and immediately update your

claims process for your payment.

Mr. Fritz Marsel

Foreign Service Claims Agent

EMAIL: lotto.netherlands101@yahoo.com.hk

You are adviced to provide the following informations:

1. Name in full,

2. Address,

3. Nationality,

4. Age,

5. Occupation,

6. Phone/Fax

Accept our felicitations!

Signed: Mrs. McCulley Valerie

For: Manager.(Events,Draws and Promotion).

Who in the world is this stupid? Well on more than one occasion I was…

I’ve been scammed twice in my life, once when I was 17 and again when I was in my early twenties. The first time was when a guy approached my friend Lee and I outside a shoe store in lower Manhattan. He told us he worked at the store and could get us any pair of shoes for $20.00. This was a high price shoe store where the cheap shoes went for $90.00. We picked shoes from the display window and gave the guy our shoe size. He wrote everything down all official like.

I gave the guy $40.00 for 2 pairs of shoes, Lee gave the guy $100.00 which was all the money he had in the world. We had both just cashed our checks from the security guard jobs we were working and were about to go to the movies. We assumed we would be walking to the movies with new shoes on…nope.

The guy said to meet him in about twenty minutes and went into the store. He had to work there right? I mean he went into the store where the shoes were and he wrote down all our information all official like.

While we waited Lee and I added up the savings we had so shrewdly attained. We figured we were about to receive $500.00 worth of badass footwear for $140.00! Now be so kind as to remember that Lee and I both lived in the projects so $140.00 was a fortune to us…but who in their right mind could past up a $200.00 pair of Pierre Cardin shoes for $20.00 bucks? Look when I was a kid Pierre Cardin WAS fashion at least in the hood he was. Hey, that Mofo is 86 and still bad ass if you ask me.

Those 20 minutes took forever, almost seemed as long as the 2 hours we waited for the store to close because when the guy did not come back after 20 minutes we just figured he could not get away from his job so we would wait until the store was closed and get our shoes then, or get our money back.

Guess what? The guy did not work in the store and we missed the movie. The second time I was scammed was when I paid $120.00 for a $400.00 camcorder. What I paid for was a brick that was nicely packaged in a shrink wrapped Sony Camcorder box.

So yes I’ve been scammed…twice. I was young but that’s no excuse I taken advantaged of because I was stupid. I learn the hard way. Both of those incidents took place more than 20 years ago and I have learned NOT to trust anyone offering me something that’s ‘to good to be true.’

I’m not about to rant against the people who fall for these scams but rather against the people who commit the crime.

Scams, Internet viruses, identity theft and other so called ‘white collar’ crimes are for the most part punished lightly in our criminal justice system.

That should change.

Think about it, what is worst stealing your money in person or stealing your identity on-line? There’s really no comparison.

Then there are those asshole hackers who plant viruses just to show how much smarter they are to other hackers. In some cases costing millions of dollars to corporations and hundreds of hours wasted on their crap for the average person.

Here’s what I want, escalate the penalty to a class A felony and put those scammers and hackers in jail with the Crips, the Bloods, MS 13 and the Arian Nation. Let those little bitches see how cleaver they are when they are punked out by Bubba the skinhead.

I’m from the projects and I’ve had a pretty rough life up to a point. I know in a fight I’m more than capable of taking care of myself…in prison I would last 3 seconds…maybe less.

Now let some pussy pampered prissy (say that 3 times) from the suburbs with his Ivy League education have some real jail time instead of probation and see if that stupid Mofo hacks anything ever again.

When they hobble out of the prison on parole and apply for a job, hire them. Tell them that the job pays monthly and after a month don’t pay them, tell them it was a scam. Then do that to everything in their life, rent them an apartment get the deposit and when they show up with the U-haul let them know they have been scammed. Seat them at a restaurant but never feed them. When it’s time to buy a car approve their loan take the down payment but never deliver the car.

Do this until their probation is up, then when the probation is up…put them back in jail. Tell them the parole was a scam.

Oh, this is the email I sent back to Mr. Fritz Marsel and Mrs. McCulley Valerie:

Dear Mr. Marsel and Mrs. McCulley,

Thank you ever so much for informing me of my winning!! I’ve never won anything in my life and this comes at such a great time in my life. I’ve just been released from prison where I was serving 30 years for killing people who thought I was stupid. They told me I had won ONE MILLION, EUROS (1,000,000.00 euros) but did not know my name and they assumed that I would be happy about winning a contest I had never entered.

Now I can use the money to finance my trip to the Netherlands find you and slowly choke the life out of you. So please be so kind as to forward me the following information:

1. Name of your kids in full,

2. Address to yours and your mother’s house

3. Nationality, (I don’t want to choke the wrong person)

4. Age,

5. Occupation,

6. Phone/Fax

Sincerely,

OWNER OF THIS EMAIL ADDRESS

P.S. I’m just kidding about choking you-I’m using a baseball bat, more fun that way. Oh wait, you guys are not into baseball, it’s soccer right? Fair enough, I’ll just KICK the shit out of you and your little dog to.

See you soon!