Crimes against the English language – and Anglican bishops
Here’s an interesting report from BBC News for everyone thoroughly sick of getting fake lottery notifications in their email inbox – involving the arrest of no less than 87 Nigerians:
Spain holds lottery scam suspects
Thousands of letters and e-mails, most in ungrammatical English, were sent out to prospective victims every day, police said.
Police said the number of those defrauded could run into many thousands, as most of them probably failed to report the crime out of embarrassment.
Police estimate that only one in 1,000 recipients of the letters needed to fall for the fraud for it to make a profit. An Anglican bishop was among those duped, according to Spanish officials.
The operation to track down the gang began in May 2007 when a huge number of identical letters destined for addresses in the US was discovered at Madrid’s Barajas airport.
Police confiscated hundreds of computers, mobile phones and 60,000 letters in a raid on more than 30 homes and businesses.
Law enforcement officers also seized a suitcase full of fake $100 notes which they say was used to convince some victims who came to Spain in person to collect their “prize money”. Read full story here…