Existential Scammers

I just got the most fascinating scam email this morning.

It's based on one I'm sure you know well. You know the model: someone in Nigeria has a bank account just teeming with unclaimed money that threatens to overload the bank vault and go spilling out into the street unless you, kind Good Person, can do the right thing and take some of that pesky cash off his hands. All it will take for you to be vastly wealthy is that you reply quickly to the email in question with all of your personal identifying information, including, of course, your social security number and a bank account into which a deposit may be made, in order to verify that you are who you say you are.

There is the implication that the money itself is blood money, given that it is sitting there because the executor of the estate of the man whose account holds the money has unfortunately to inform you that the wealthy man in question was overthrown in a coup, and all his family was very sadly killed.

But that should pose no problem to you, Enterprising (but dumb) American, since you have no moral qualms about spending the money of now-dead, once-corrupt African politician. After all, HE doesn't need the money any more, so why shouldn't you be the next logical choice in the succession of inheritance?

Signed cordially yours, with lots of bad grammar, non-idiomatic phrasing, and odd spelling choices, etc. etc. etc...

So, I'm wise to all those Nigerian scams, which landed in my email inbox at the rate of about four per week for a year or two (yes, we clearly have fabulous filter software where I work). And I, clever girl, never replied to any of them, tempting as they were.

However.

Today I got one with significantly less detail but somehow of more interest. Here it is:

Hello,

I have a proposition for you, this however is not mandatory nor will I in any manner compel you to honor against your will. Let me start by introducing myself. I am Dr.Carl Chang Director of Operations of the Hang Seng Bank Ltd,Sai Wan Ho Branch. I have a mutual beneficial business suggestion for you.

1. Can you handle this project?
2. Can I give you this trust ?
3. What will be your commission?

If you can sponsor this transfer Consider this and get back to me as soon as possible.

Obviously, it's not an email to which I want to respond.

On the other hand, there is something oddly appealing in its inadvertent suggestion that the entire proposition can be dictated by me. I get to decide whether I can handle this project (project itself not named; I must intuit said project and determine my own competence to complete it). I get to decide if trust is well placed in me (yes, it is! with certainty! especially concerning super secret projects). I get to choose my own commission ($millions, obviously).

The philosophical suggestion that I should "Consider this" without knowing what "this" is, that I should, in short, consider my own sense of self-worth, honor (obviously this proposal will not go against that foremost quality), competence, and trustworthiness has given me pause. I have no idea what it would mean to be "compelled to honor against my will" but it certainly sounds like a tremendous puzzle in abstract understandings of the self.

I am sure it's not at all what this scammer was hoping for, but I suspect I will be wandering around for the rest of the day, pondering precisely what projects might define the outer limits of my honor and whether I could be trusted to carry them out.

It almost makes me feel like a philosopher.

Or a super spy.

[voice over]: This message will self-destruct in 5-4-3-2-.... *bOoM!*