Seriously?

I got this ridiculous email today:

I am contacting you because some one who used to live in New orleans gave me your information. I would have loved to call you on 504943XXXX which I have as your phone number but everything is a mess down here and the phone lines are not working. It is with a heavy heart that I’m writing you from a hospital here in Japan.

I am Edna Stecker, wife of Dr. Gordon Stecker, an American doctor and businessman who deals on oil products. We have been living in Japan for 20 years with our only daughter.

I am not happy to tell you that my family was heavily affected by the Tsunami which rocked our Japan recently. Too many lives and properties were washed away and my family lost everything. Up until now, I still cannot find my only daughter who was washed away by a very huge and scary mass of water. My husband is currently on admission in a hospital due to injuries sustained from the debris that crumbled upon us. He is currently in a coma and I was lucky to have escaped with no major injuries. I hope he survives. Please pray for us.

Before the disaster, my husband shipped a consignment to the United States via a courier company. My husband was supposed to travel to New York so as to retrieve the consignment from the delivery man from the courier company but because of our present condition, nothing could be done. According to the courier company, the delivery man will get to JFK Airport any moment from now.

My purpose of contacting you is to assist us in retrieving this consignment from the delivery man as soon as he gets the JFK Airport in New York. My husband has already settled the delivery charges for shipping the consignment to New York. The diplomatic courier will charge you a little fee for delivering the consignment from New York to your house in New orleans and you will be responsible for these charges.

The contents of the consignment are $18 million USD (in $100.00 USD bills), tax clearance documents, anti-drug certificate, my husband’s statement of account, company memorandum, and other necessary clearance documents which certifies the fund as legal. If you can retrieve the consignment and keep it safe for my husband until we can make it to the USA, we are willing to offer you $3 million USD out of the money in the consignment as compensation for your assistance.

Due to the nature of this delivery, we registered the contents of the consignment as medical books and journals and not cash. You are not to let anyone know the real contents of the consignment as it is being delivered by diplomatic means.

You are to reply this email if you accept this offer so that I will send you the contact phone number of the delivery man in USA so that you can call him and make arrangements for retrieving the box. I will also send you all other details which you need to claim the consignment on my husband’s behalf.

I await your urgent reply.

Thank you and God bless.

Do people really fall for this? This just seems so patently absurd that I can't imagine getting suckered in. I have even gotten phone calls with this sort of thing, like I have won a lottery I didn't buy a ticket for but I have to pay some percentage of it up front via Western Union to get it. This is just so absurd. If you have $18 million dollars or whatever, you can withhold the percentage, I said to one of these mouth breathers. He got all in a huff & told me no, I had to pay it. Bitch, Please.

So if you get this kinda email/call/etc just ignore & delete as spam or whatever. I am particularly galled by this one bc it tries to profiteer off this outrageous disaster. Sick.