A slippery con man indeed.

We would like to thank and welcome all those who have become aware of us via our recent Freshly Pressed status.

We now find ourselves reminded of the plight of one Alfred P. Doolittle, who found himself elevated to a lofty position through the well-meaning efforts of others.

For the past 18 months this blog has been the meanderings of a madman and his cat. We were never overly concerned as to content as we were fairly certain that no one read it.

Our newfound readership gave us pause to consider whether we should do something more.

Should we aspire to something greater?

Fortunately, during the pause, the feeling passed, so back to the inbox we go.

We received this message, warning us about the activities of one John T. Kehoe of Sacramento, California.

It seems that Mr. Kehoe is attempting to make off with five million dollars which seemingly belongs to us and which has mysteriously surfaced in Nigeria.

Could there be anything to this? Let’s have a look.

From: CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA
Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2012 6:02 PM
To: Undisclosed recipients:
Subject: Did You Authorize Mr. John T. Kehoe To come For Your Claim??

As is customary, the email is addressed to no one in particular.

If you hover your mouse cursor over the CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA link above, most browsers will pop a little box up showing the actual destination of the link. For the benefit of those for whom that doesn’t happen, the link points to test@grandtheatre.co.uk.

It struck us that a theater in Wolverhampton, England was an unusual place to locate a branch office of the Central Bank of Nigeria, but then we do not pretend to understand the banking industry.

CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA
WEBSITE:WWW.CENBANK.ORG
E-MAIL:cbn2012@blumail.org
TEL:+ 234-802-273-6789.

The address we are given to respond to is registered with blumail.org, a subsidiary of Bluworld.org, where we were able to set up an email account for the cat in less than five minutes. Again, this does not help the writer’s credibility at all.

According to the contact us page as www.cenbank.org, most of their emails address end with @cenbank.org, not @blumail.org.

ATTENTION: BENEFICIARY,
YOUR URGENT CONFIRMATION IS NEEDED FROM YOU.

Of course it’s urgent. When are these things not?

Definitely, I know that this letter will be a surprising one to you.

Absolutely startling.

In our office today, was a present of One Mr. John T. Kehoe of 122 Fitch Way, Sacramento, Ca. 95864 filing application contrary to your pending fund transfer. The above mentioned person visited this Bank yesterday with a power of attorney given in his favor by your good self, granting him the benefit to process and claim your inheritance of $5,000,000.00( Five Million United States Dollars Only) for personal reasons. He further Stated that the online account be Terminated while the fund should be wired to his Bank account with Bank Of America, Routing Number 121000358,Swift Code number BOFAUS3N.Our office have ask Mr. John T. Kehoe return back to the Bank within 48hours to enable us have a personal confirmation from you being hitherto the beneficiary.

If we are reading this correctly, Mr. Kehoe was there yesterday. The writer asked him to return within 48 hrs, which would be tomorrow. 

Today Mr. Kehoe sent a present. Did they open it? Was it someones birthday? Did he know our name?

Please tell us, the suspense is terrible.

We are sorry to have delayed your instruction in giving out this fund since we must adhere to the mod us operand of this honorable bank by making sure this request is verified and confirmed by the beneficiary and his existing attorney. Your confirmation to the above will be appreciated. We look forward to hearing from you soon. In receipt of this confidential Letter, you are required to call this Bank immediately you receive this Confidential Letter Direct Tel:+ 234-802-273-6789.

We would ask for clarification of mod us operand. We are unfamiliar with the concept.

We would also like to address the phrase Confidential Letter. One would suspect that a confidential letter would not be widely circulated. One would find oneself to be in error.

We submitted John T. Kehoe 122 Fitch Way, Sacramento, Ca. 95864 to a search engine in order to learn a little bit about our adversary.

We learned from Google maps that the house numbers on Fitch Way start at 1200 and continue upwards to 1390, which make us wonder where 122 is located.

We also learned from Bing that Mr. Kehoe has tried this sort of thing before:
May 2009, Barclays Bank, London, England
July 2009, Central Bank of Nigeria
Sept 2009, Barclays Bank, Lagos, Nigeria
Jan 2011, United Bank of Africa, Ghana
Feb 2011, Barclays Bank, Lagos, Nigeria (again)
Mar 2011, Barclays Bank, Lagos, Nigeria (again again)
Aug 2011, Barclays Bank, Lagos, Nigeria
May 2012, Central Bank of Nigeria
July 2012, Bank of Thailand
and of course this latest effort back at the Central Bank of Nigeria, yet again. There were many more listings but there’s no real point to bringing them up.

Each time he seems to get away.

Obviously the man is a super criminal worthy of being mentioned in the same breath with Lex Luthor.

Fool us once shame on you, fool us twice shame on us, fool us again and we shall meet the qualifications to be an executive at an African bank.

Await your urgent attention to this.

Wait away, everyone deserves a hobby.

Yours Sincerely,
Dr. Sanusi Lamido
Governor Central Bank of Nigeria.

We doubt your sincerity and doubly doubt that you are Dr. Lamido.

——————————————————————————-
Wolverhampton Grand Theatre (1982) Ltd. A company limited by guarantee.Registered in England No. 1731876. Registered Office: Lichfield Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1DE. Charity No. 515154

This e-mail, and any attachment, is confidential. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system, do not use or disclose the information in any way. The contents of this message may contain personal views which are not the views of the Grand Theatre, unless specifically stated. Any offer included in this e-mail does not constitute a contract.

We willingly admit to violating the spirit of the disclaimer, as it has nothing to do with the message, and quite frankly its inclusion is somewhat mystifying.

We suspect that the writer of this current email speaks something less than fluent English or they would have noticed the disclaimer’s intent.

It is also possible that the sender is relaying the mail through the theater mail server and doesn’t even know about the disclaimer.

In either case, it’s shoddy workmanship.

At any rate, should you find yourself worrying that John T. Kehoe is attempting to make off with your fortune, we would suggest that you might have better things to do.

Delete the warning and move on.

This is a Fraud.

That is all.