Writing Challenge: Follow The Money
Created | Updated Apr 21, 2013
It's time for a new writing challenge. Y'all are getting lazy again.
Post Writing Challenge: Follow the Money
You see this picture? It's from 1908. It shows a man glad-handing an unwary traveller. What's that he's got behind his back? It's a 'gold brick'. You see, a common scam back in those days was to gild or paint an ordinary brick, and then let somebody have it 'at discount' for solid gold.
Why did people believe this? Because
- At the time, there were 'gold rushes' and 'silver rushes'.
- Some people, like the Unsinkable Molly Brown, made fortunes that way.
- People's hopefulness often outweighs their common sense.
These days, we don't really believe perfect strangers will sell us gold bricks at bargain prices. But hope springs eternal in the hearts of con men everywhere. And they've got a new tool: the internet.
The following is an ACTUAL EMAIL received by the h2g2 Post. When it appeared in our inbox, I thought it was a submission, so I read it. (What this says about Post submissions is a topic for another day.) Pastey says they can't copyright scam emails, so I'm sharing. (I'll tell you why in a minute.) This is it, uncorrected save for one redaction:
Dear Friend, Pardon my manner of approach, but I am short of options. I found something in SYRIA which i cannot handle personally because of my UN assignment. I am a journalist by name [Name Withheld, a well-known foreign correspondent for a British newspaper], who went with the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command (IJC) to SYRIA. Feel free to conduct a search about me on the internet. On December 2012, at about 11:00hrs, I came across Eric Harroun, who ask me for a help, which I was afraid to go closer to him but when he threatened to kill me if I don?t follow him I had to follow him into storage room only to discover that he has some metal boxes piled on top each other. Before he now told me that he will need my help in other to find a means of taking the boxes to a man by name Abu Bakr in IRAQ, but i was afraid to that because I don?t know the content of the boxes, but when i accepted helping him he left the place running, at the same time I had to call our unit driver who came with a van and helped me take the boxes to our base where we forced the boxes open, some contain guns, bullets and other amours. One of the boxes was filled with hard drugs (heroine) and the other two to my amazement contained US dollar cash of $7.5M. The boxes containing drugs and weapons were returned while we decided to keep the money to ourselves as he is now sentenced to death by the united state government. Under strong disguise, we managed to transport the box of cash to a security vault in Malaysia for safe keeping as a diplomatic consignment. I am now in desperate need of a reliable and trustworthy person who would receive, secure and protect the cash box from the security vault. You will have 10% of this fund; however feel free to negotiate on your percentage.
Please assure me of your keeping this top most secret within you so that my job would not be jeopardized.
My Sincere Regards,
[Famous Journalist]
Amazing, huh? I withheld the name they misused out of journalistic courtesy – I wouldn't want to get inquiries, either.
Your Assignment
Now that you've laughed at this 'British correspondent' who can't write English, what do we want you to do?
Why, write a story, of course. Take the letter as a jumping-off point. Imagine it's true – or not. Imagine your character answers the email. Write a snarky answer. Or write an adventure story. Or write a poem about it – we know of a contest you could enter with a poem like that. Come to think of it, that contest pays real money.
We don't have any money, of course. (We could offer a gold brick if we find some paint.) But we'll publish your efforts. Give it a try!
And remember: NEVER answer these emails for real.
See you on snopes.com!
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