Today I received the kind of email that makes you wonder whether the internet has changed at all since 1998.

The message began with a single, intimate word:

Dear

No name. No comma. Just Dear. Already, I felt seen.

The sender introduced herself as Jolima Kandeh Winde, age 29, a relative of former Sierra Leone rebel leader Foday Sankoh. Political conflict had forced her family into exile in Porto-Novo, Benin. Her mother had died during the war. Her father had escaped with her, then died on November 25, 2023.

This is an extraordinary amount of geopolitical exposition to receive from someone who does not know my first name.

Then came the business opportunity.

During the war my late father accumulated a significant amount of money through the sale of diamonds, totaling USD27,200,000 (Twenty-Seven Million Two Hundred Thousand United States Dollars).

Twenty-seven million dollars. In diamonds. Currently held by a security company. And somehow the final obstacle between this fortune and a sound investment strategy is me, a person whose contact information was apparently discovered during what the email calls a “serious search for a trustworthy individual.”

I would love to see the search criteria.

trustworthy:true
has_email:true
international_diamond_custody_experience:optional

The offer

For helping move the money into “reliable custody,” I would receive 35% of the total funds.

The email even does the arithmetic for me:

USD9,520,000 (Nine Million Five Hundred Twenty Thousand United States Dollars)

This is thoughtful. If there is one thing I demand from an unsolicited multimillion-dollar diamond proposal, it is agreement between the numeric and written amounts.

There is, however, one small phrase doing Olympic-level work in the offer:

after deducting any expenses incurred in clearing the funds

There it is. The entire plot hiding inside “any expenses.”

The next email would presumably introduce a processing fee. Then a customs fee. Then an anti-terrorism certificate fee, a diplomatic seal fee, or perhaps a very urgent fee required because the security company’s printer has run out of cyan. The $9.52 million would remain permanently one modest payment away.

A scam with confidence

What makes the email funny is not merely that it is implausible. It is the confidence with which every detail is presented.

  • The exact date of the father’s death: November 25, 2023.
  • The exact fortune: $27.2 million.
  • My exact commission: 35%.
  • The reason I was selected: I exist online and may be trustworthy.

The story gives precision where no proof exists and vagueness exactly where the money would leave my account. We know the inheritance to the dollar, but the “security company” does not get a name.

It is also beautifully ambitious. This person did not offer me a suspicious refund or a discounted laptop. She offered to make me the custodian of a rebel-adjacent diamond fortune because she cannot “manage or invest these funds alone.” Apparently the logical solution to that problem is Gmail.

The message closes:

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Kind regards. Jolima

I regret to report that Jolima will not be hearing from me. I am forced to decline this opportunity due to my strict policy against becoming a minor character in an international financial-crime thriller.

The unfunny part

This is a classic advance-fee scam: promise an enormous reward, establish urgency or tragedy, then require smaller payments or financial information before the imaginary fortune can be released. The story changes; the transaction does not.

The safe response is boring and effective: do not reply, do not click anything, do not send identification or banking details, and report the message as spam. The FTC advises people not to respond to unexpected messages asking for money or personal information and provides a reporting form at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

I have also omitted the sender’s email address here. The address may be disposable, spoofed, or connected to an account someone else lost control of. The email itself is the artifact worth preserving.

Somewhere, perhaps, a security company in Porto-Novo is still patiently holding my $9.52 million.

I hope they invest it wisely.