Emails

I’ve hit pay dirt… again

Jonathan

Sometimes I receive messages in the spiced ham folder of my email that get me so excited I feel like I want to climb onto the tallest building in the suburb and shout my exhilaration to the world. I’m always reluctant to do that because I also feel like I could spontaneously combust at any moment and the tallest building in the suburb happens to be a school, and I wouldn’t want to scare the kiddies, or spatter them with charred human meat.

I think the closest I’ve ever come to climbing the bell tower at St Mary’s with post-email elation was after reading this little doozy. But today I received a piece of electronic correspondence that blew Jean Fafona’s effort out of the water. Some of that water happily sprayed onto me, putting out the fire that had started on both of my arms.

Here it is:

Dear partner,

I am James Francis from Florida USA I was the personal account officer of  late Libyan Leader Omar Muammar al Gaddafi for 25year, before his dead last year 2011 he ask me to transfer a very huge amount of money about $20m (Twenty Million US Dollars) to a Commercial Bank in Malaysia (Chase Bank) for a twenty five story’s building he wanted to buy in SARAWAK MALAYSIA without a beneficiary name  because of the nature of his country, Since after his death  no one has come for the claim of the money due to the fact that there was no beneficiary to the fund.

Now the Bank (Chase Bank) is asking me to present the beneficiary of the money that they need to transfer the money back to the owner since the account is dormant for a long time now.  After going through your profile and that of your company I believe you are the right person for this job since your company’s business correlates with a kind of business I would like to invest my own share of the money when is finally transferred.

But right now my healthy condition and security in my country I can’t transfer this fund to my personal account rather I want you to assist me to receive this fund” If you would assist me with this I will compensate you with 30% of the total sum and at the same time invest my own money in your company’s business. More details will be sending to you when I receive your interest response.

You are free to call me for more information.

Thanks & Best Regard
James Francis,
H/P: +1-732-659-5513
Email: jamesfrancis219@rocketmail.com

Here’s what I sent back when my arms stopped smouldering:

Dear partner (indeed!),

First, congratulations on getting to the silver anniversary under the Colonel. Fair effort, that.

Now, let’s get down to tin tacks: I like the sound of this deal for three reasons:

1. It’s straightforward and makes perfect sense.
2. You’ve obviously done your research.
3. It dovetails nicely with a similar transaction I’ve been looking for a partner to help me complete.

When you say you’ve been through my profile, I presume you mean you’ve read my blog. (You and half the rest of the world!) Before I go on, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Now, be honest – is it the best thing you’ve ever read? A few people have told me it is, but I get the feeling they’re only saying it because they want something from me. It would be great to get the opinion of someone who has no ulterior motive.

In any case, I really believe that investing in my business is a financial decision you won’t regret. At the moment I make an annual profit of A$0. Your generous cash injection will ensure I can maintain the operation’s stability and I am extremely confident that I can continue to post similar profits into the foreseeable future.

Now to the money. US$20 million is certainly a very huge sum. But not as big as the sum I’ve been looking to transfer from an account in ULAANBAATAR, MONGOLIA for the last decade or so.

You see, my story sounds remarkably similar to yours.

I am, as you well know, Jonathan Rivett from Melbourne Australia. I was the financial adviser to the late Idi Amin. (We might have even bumped into each other at one of those Swiss alpine retreats Idi and the Colonel went on together, now I come to think of it. Do you have thick red hair and a small scar on your left cheek?) Before he died in 2003, the big fella asked me to mortgage Uganda and transfer the proceeds into a commercial bank in northern Asia. I said to Idi, I said, “Idi, you silly fat fuck, you can’t mortgage an entire country. Get serious, please.” (By the way, when I told that to Forest Whitaker while he was doing research for The Last King of Scotland, he laughed so hard he fell of the chair he was sitting on and thought he’d dislocated his shoulder, but it turned out to only be a minor subluxation and he was fine.) So Idi returned to the realms of possibility, did some  stock standard embezzling and told me to transfer the resulting US$97 million into a commercial bank in Mongolia (Khan Bank) for the purchase of a mountain.

Because of the nature of the toiletries industry at the time, he made the transfer into the account of his invisible friend, JimJam Jones, a gigantic talking prune with predilection for stamp collecting and brightly coloured bow ties. Now, JimJam Jones owned a concrete business operating out of Libya (you may even have purchased some concrete on behalf of the Colonel from him) and was away on business at the time of the transfer – Idi demanded that I make the transaction without informing JimJam. When JimJam discovered the money in his account (now holidaying in Cancun) he made the assumption that he had won the lottery, despite never having bought a ticket. He became reckless, decided to go waterskiing for the first time in his life, even though he was an invisible prune and didn’t have opposable digits, and was killed in a spectacular explosion involving an offshore oil rig (JimJam was smoking two cuban cigars as he skied). While this was all happening, Idi’s kidney’s were playing up; he died in Saudi Arabia not long after the last of JimJan’s delicious remains washed up on the beaches of Montego Bay, Jamaica. This meant that nobody was left to claim the money now lying dormant in a dead figment’s Mongolian account. Of course there was me, but everyone knows foreign banks only let you transfer large sums of money if you have a complete stranger into whose bank account you can make the transfer and, until today, I didn’t know any complete strangers. But now I do. His name is James Francis, and I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. (By the way, I’m referring to you, not another James Francis.)

OK, so here’s the deal. I will give you 42.87 percent of the US97 million and will invest 12.43 percent  into your Miami pineapple growing business. All you need to do is send me a statement of your interest, followed by your bank account details, followed by your left hand.

You are free to email me for more information:

haughtfeelings@gmail.com

With a jiggly wiggly sense of anticipation and a yearning to trade despot stories, I remain faithfully yours,

Jonathan

PS: I once bench pressed a fully grown cow.

PPS: Who do you think will play Gaddafi if they make a movie about him? I think probably Fassbender.