This one is new to me – it’s all done in Jesus’ name! So of course I had to do another deconstruction.

Dear in Christ,

Well, I’m not “in Christ”, so there’s a hit right away. Hell, I even link to Pharyngula on my linkbar. Obviously has just bought a mailing list from one of the other scumbags in the area.

Calvary greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am Deacon George Useh, a member of Day Spring Ministry, basically a Prayer and deliverance Ministry.During a Prayer and fasting session in my Ministry, I asked our Lord Jesus Christ to give me the opportunity to redeem my life and purify what remains of my wealth, God delivery revealed to me to Invest in His Kingdom through you and your
 Ministry.

Jesus told me to, uh, “Invest in His Kingdom” by scamming the unbelievers out of their savings! Wow, how cynical.

As the bible says\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"Go to the world,preach the gospel,spread his words,heal the sick............\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"

…and scam all the mugus? Oh, not there in my copy, but maybe Nigeria’s translation is different. I have no idea.

I got your email when i was lead by the spirit to be in search of the man of god on Christan search on the Internet.Like i have told you earlier in my last email that the lord minister to me to give to charity.

Well, except for the inconvenient fact that I’m somewhat lacking in religon and I’ve never seen any email from this known 419er before…

The first link on Google for the name, by the way, is a police blotter in Chatanooga which features someone who’d received fake money orders from the exact same scammer earlier this year – this particular variant has been operating for a while. You’d have thought a spammer would make sure that he was using names that couldn’t be zeroed out by a run on Google, but there you go.

I am not interested in the Earthly commissions as my rewards is from the Heaven above.I and my institution are blessed to help the needy and not after the rewards of the world as the bible says if not the lord that buideth the house the laborer labour but in vain...........

…and then the labourer sent out a mass spam campaign to a bought-in list of email addresses and rolled in it for a few years.

Nice spelling issue there – “laborer labour”. It does look like there’s more than one hand in this letter from the fluctuations in spelling and capitalisation, one American English speaker and one UK English speaker at least.

I will like to donate to you/ministry and i will like to donate through a money order of 6,500 dollars for him to cash.Better still,i have some other charities which i wants to donate funds to and i will wants oncashing the cheque to help me donate some part of the money to the other charities or needies as well.

And now we get the money order element of the scam. $6500 seems awfully small for a scammer to use, but it would be big money in Lagos.

I am giving you 2,000 dollars out of the money and i wants you on cashing the cheque to help me donate the remaining 4,500 dollars to some other charities or needies whose in formations i will give you when the cheque is cashed in the cash stores.I will want you to furnish me with the following in formations below:

(1)Name which you wants the check to be addressed
(2)Address where you wants me to send the cheque to(NOT P.O BOXES)
(3)Your Mobile telephone number for prompt communication.

Wow, nice way to have enough information to steal someone’s identity. This scam could be extremely lethal:

• “I want your bank account number for security” or
• “Can you send me a photocopy of something with your address on it so I can verify?”
• Hence, identity theft for credit card applications/loans/bank accounts/passport applications/so on and so forth

But because the scammers are thick, this is probably just a cheque cashing scam (and notice this uses both British and US spellings in different parts of the email again). You cash the cheque, the scammers receive $4500 in the post and then the local cheque cashing place calls up demanding all their money back when it comes through as fraudulent.

That NOT PO BOXES thing is probably to catch out scambaiters, but I’m not entirely sure on that one. Maybe there is an ID theft element here of some sort, but I can’t be certain.

The ending is quite something:

As soon as i received this informations,i will go ahead to send you the check.After the successful completion of this first phase of the lords works with you then i can go ahead to send you another cheque and hence the continuous works of the lord.

I Am Yours In Christ,
Deacon George Useh

E-MAIL: Gospelpromoters001@yahoomail.fr

Look! A promise for more! And a disposable Yahoo France email address! Look at the confidence engendered by this guy.

And the ‘Lord’ has “continuous works”! Well, this scammer certainly does, that’s for sure. At the very least, however, we can be assured that if the Christian God, or for that matter a Jewish or Muslim God really does exist he’s going to hell – that’s at least four commandments right there (the third and eight through ten), and you could push for six (one and two, because as a 419er and as a scammer he obviously idolises Mammon.) I think nothingness is probably better, but who’s to say?