'Charity' spam

Darksun

Below is the text of a spam email I received

Dear Friend,

Please excuse me for any inconvice caused by this message.

My name is Valentin. I am student and I live with my mother in small city Kaluga, in Russia. My mother is invalid. She cannot see and she receive pension from the government very rare which is not enough even for medications.

I work very hard every day to be able to buy the necessities and medications for my mother, but my salary is very small, because my studies still not finished.

Due to the deep crisis, authorities stoped gas in our district and we cannot heat our home anymore. I do not know what to do, because the weather is very cold here already and I'm very afraid that if the temperature will be lower than 0 degree in our sleeping room, we will not be able to survive.

I applied to local Red Cross and they explained me that many people ask them for help every day and they cannot help to each family. They adviced me to search help from individuals.

Thanks to free public Internet access in our school library, I was able to find several addresses, including yours and I decided to appeal to you with a prayer in my heart for a small help. If you have any old used sleeping bag, warm blanket, warm clothes in size L or XL, portable heater, canned food, vitamins, water boiler, medicines against cold weather, any hygiene products, I will be very grateful you if you could send it to our home address:

(address removed)

If you think that it would be better or easier for you to help with some money, please writes me back to me and I will provide you with details how to send it safely, if you agree. This way to help is very good, because in this case I will be able to buy a portable stove and heat our home during the winter.

I hope to hear from you very soon and I pray that you can help us. I also hope very much that this hard situation will become better in our country very soon.

>From all my heart I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2006. Please excuse me, once more, for any inconvience I could cause you with this message.

Valentin,
Kaluga. Russia.

Now, who knows, perhaps this is a genuine request for help, however, I would urge anyone who wants to help people like this to do it through legitimate channels such as the International Red Cross, Shelter, Oxfam and the Samaritan's Purse. They will be able to use cash donations and unwanted goods to help people in need all over the world.

Amba_Gambla

no no no.... it's a well known Nigerian 419 scam..

if you were to investigate the headers of the email, I'm 99% certain you'll fiund this was sent from Lagos, Nigeria....

Like the OP said, if you wanna help, go the official route...

vickylee

I've had this same email a couple of times.

Hit the delete button as soon as you can!