As I read the email I was bewildered but happy to find that it was just a scammer going by the name Kirsten Peterson. They wanted to notify me that two men (an American national named Charles Weston and a Canadian national named Joseph Bevan) had somehow gotten power of attorney over me and had claimed that I was dead and wanted to claim a $30 million USD fund in my name. This fund was now lying dormant and unclaimed according to her and I simply had to provide a few key details about my address, marital status, full legal name, occupation and so on in order to get it.
For the first time since all of this began I felt a jarring return to normalcy, but not the normal anyone really likes or wants. I was immediately reminded of James Veitch’s TED talk about replying to spam and I decided to reply to pass the time.
It amazes me that even in the face of a global pandemic spam emails, phising, and scams still go on. I feel a strange sense of admiration for the people that, no matter what, are set on “hustling” that is to say doing anything and everything to "get that money" during a crisis. In the wake of news stories about people getting their karmic payback for buying obscene amounts of resources (hand sanitizer and the like) only to be thwarted into donating it I am blown away by the human commitment to “the hustle”.
I also recently watched a video from a YouTuber about the practice of “scambaiting” or wasting scammers’ time for entertainment on the internet that I would highly recommend. The video raises some interesting questions about the typical American relationship to customer service scams and what external factors come into play when we engage with scammers. The video left an impression and when I was making my response it made me curious.
All of this to say that although I think the scammer is doing a bad thing which is made even more sinister because it is being done during a global pandemic I still wonder about the person on the other end. I gave a few non-serious answers with the intention of wasting their time but also included a question for the person on the other end (if there is one): how are you holding up? In the absence of a lot of interpersonal connection I've suddenly started latching on to any kind of relationship I can get. I wonder if the looming pandemic has altered their thinking in a similar way, if at all.
PS I haven not yet heard back from them about the $30 million but rest assured I'm going to get that money.
The youtube scambaiting deconstruction was pretty great. Gets to that classic "no ethical consumption under capitalism" heuristic which always delivers. You can't cheer at taking down a scammer because the global economy is a scam and the U.S. and Europe are the scammers.
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