At 12:05 AM 7/30/02 -0700, bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote:
>common.   The origination, at least to NPR's knowledge, starts with the
>scam elements being transposed from Nigeria,
>to London, England.   Instead of the bereved widow of a Nigerian national,
>the originating con was directed to the 'heirs'
>of Sir Frances Drake's estate.   If you were 'chosen' as an heir, you
>could contribute a portion of your money so that a
>fellow heir (and scam artist) could reclaim the monetary largess in the
>Court of England, by proving that Elizabeth I had
>nulled Sir Drake's will and taken his fortune as her own.   Oscar
>Hartzell, the gent who started this scam, way back in the early 1800s,
>managed to gain quite a fortune, all on the backs of idiots.   Sound familiar?
Coincidentally enough, I'm currently in the middle of a pretty good book
about the Francis Drake scam called "Drake's Fortune" by Richard Raynor.
Despite being pretty familiar with the whole 419 scam stuff (see my earlier
FoRK post from a few months back about how the whole scam works:
http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/2002-May/011928.html) I never put the
two together as being related.
Apparently, I suck at pattern matching.
-Mike
http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

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From fork-admin@xent.com  Tue Jul 30 12:35:53 2002

Asteroid impact with Earth ruled out for 2019
PASADENA, California (AP) -- Astronomers said Monday they have
determined that a newly discovered, 1.2-mile-wide asteroid will miss