PROFESSOR SOLUDO IS AT IT AGAIN

Professor Charles C. Soludo is a very busy man. Not only is he Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Central Bank of Nigeria, he is also a member of the British Department for International Business Development and a distinguished professor of economics. He is also, I'm proud to say, a very good friend of mine, judging from the number of emails I receive from him.

While he may be a good friend, he's a rather tedious email writer because his emails to me are always about the same thing. He always writes to tell me that I have a gazillion dollars/pounds/euros/rubles or yen on hold at his bank simply waiting to be deposited to my bank account. Then he proceeds to ask me for all manner of personal information about myself which, I suppose, shows his genuine concern for me. Then he gives me his email address and phone number to call him directly but strangely, the email address and phone number is always different on each email he sends. Perhaps he doesn't want his wife to know. After corresponding with me for such a long while, I decided good manners dictated I needed to contact the Professor, but since I'm not prepared to spring the bucks for a call to Nigeria, I created a special email account just for him and sent him the information he requested. He wrote back straight away and after exchanging some passionately heated correspondence over a period of four days it turns out that, just like so many men out there these days, all he wanted was some of my hard earned money payable in the form of an untraceable Western Union wire transfer. I was heartbroken.

Of course, I'm being intentionally sarcastic; I know that this email was yet another "419" advance fee fraud scam and only one of fifty or so I receive in the course of a month. I know these scams include check cashing, money laundering, fake charities, puppy adoptions, romance-angle, fake lotteries, fraud recovery and employment offers and I know the average scam victim loses many thousands of dollars after falling prey.

What I didn't know was how much fun it was to actually bait one of these criminals (using a complete alias, naturally). I've had a fun-filled four days convincing this man that, yes, I was absolutely going to the Western Union office immediately to send him the money. A pity it was that I never made it because over that time period, the car broke down, I got the flu and my paycheck hadn't cleared the bank. Alright, so it's a bit childish, this scam-baiting thing, but times are tough, money is tight, and he is a thief. No harm, no foul.

He is still sending me an email or two a day; I think he's well and truly hooked because he now calls me "sweetheart" and "honey". Too bad he doesn't realize what a complete waste of his time I am, because, while a fool and his money are soon parted, even though its April 1st, I'm no fool.