Lipshitz, 

I know that this message will come to you as a surprise since we don't know each other before, but for purpose of introduction, I am MR WILLIAM ZUMA the chief auditor of AMALGAMATED BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA (ABSA). 

There is an account opened in this bank in 1980 and since 1990 nobody has operated on this account again. No other person knows about this account or any thing concerning it, the account has no other beneficiary and my investigation proved to me as well that his company does not know anything about this account and the amount involved is (USD$ 15M) Fifteen million United States dollars. 

I am only contacting you as a foreigner because this money cannot be approved to a local bank here, but can only be approved to any foreign account because the money is in us dollars and the former owner of the account is Mr. SMITH B. ANDREAS is a foreigner too. Please reply urgently so that I will inform you the next step to take immediately. Send also your private telephone and fax number including the full details of the account to be used for the deposit. I want us to meet face to face or sign a binding agreement to bind us together so that you can receive this money into a foreign account or any account of your choice where the fund will be safe. 

With my position now in the office I can transfer this money to any foreigner's reliable account, which you can provide with assurance that this money will be intact pending my physical arrival in your country for sharing. You can also come to discuss with me face to face after which I will make this remittance in your presence and two of us will fly to your country at least two days after the money was lodged into your account. 

At the conclusion of this business, you will be given 25% of the total amount, 70% will be for me, and while 5% will be for expenses both parties might have incurred during the process of transferring. I look forward to your earliest reply through my email. 

MR WILLIAM ZUMA 

Mr. Zuma, 

You have done the right thing contacting me regarding this matter. I'm a wealthy industrialist, who dabbles in the international narcotics trade, and I am well-familiar with the need for secrecy and trust in such instances. 

Our next move will be for you to provide me your complete contact details. From your email I take it you are located in the United Kingdom ö this is perfect. I have a number of attorneys on retainer in Britain, South Africa, and other assorted locales across the globe. 

These attorneys can be trusted, and will be paid from my portion of our transaction. 

Due to my business dealings, my true identity remains sacrosanct, as I am a public figure in certain countries, holding honourary government positions, and the like. My identity is so well-guarded that I am unafraid to tell you that I have been involved in select political assassinations over the years. 

I will wait for your reply, and trust that you will tell no one of our contact ö "Loose lips..." and all that. 

Selah, 

XL 

From William Zuma: 

Attn: Selah 

How are you Sir. Thanks alot for your email and the contents was well understood. Please I would like you to contact my lawyer He has been helping me since and he is a very reputable attorney and He is a good man. His name is (Bar.) MICHEAL SMITH. And His phone number is +27-83-594-9037.Please contact him as soon as possible. As you can see that we don't have to waist anymore time in this transaction. Please contact him and get back to me immediately. 

Best Regard 

WILLIAM ZUMA 

From Xavier Lipshitz: 

Dear Mr. Zuma, 

(May I call you William?) 

I was in possession of your lawyer's name even before you sent it to me. Since receiving your initial message, my attorneys have had their usual network of private investigators check your background, credentials, criminal history and income tax records. 

The good news is that we have determined that you are legitimate. The bad news is that your purported lawyer, "MR. MICHEAL SMITH" is, in fact, a member of law enforcement working in deep cover for INTERPOL. 

My first reaction was to suspect you, too, worked for law enforcement, and were luring me into a trap. But after perusing the details of your life ö employment history, education, investment portfolio, etc. ö I realized that you are not in on "the sting." 

Our deal, however, still may be salvageable. 

After conducting some routine wire-tapping, and hacking into your lawyer's home and office PCs, my investigators are quite certain that "SMITH" knows nothing about you contacting me, or about this transaction. This is good. 

So, now we do things outside the normal channels. 

Since I have your home address, I will send one of my attorneys to meet with you privately. Please disassociate yourself from this "MICHEAL SMITH" as quickly as possible. Be sure that you state your reason for doing this as "personal." 

Finally, we will now renegotiate the terms of our arrangement. Since this deal is contingent on my being a "foreigner" I believe the division of our transaction should be changed to 63.32% - 36.28%, with you receiving the lower share. Any and all expenses will be taken from your share ö including my attorneysâ fees, as per my previous note. 

A fee will also be charged to your amount to cover my private investigators, as they have uncovered information about this "MICHEAL SMITH" that may well benefit you ö Mr. SMITH has a dossier on you. My investigators can get this dossier and make it disappear. But not for free. 

And as a gesture of goodwill, I would like you to prepare a lobster dinner for my attorney when he arrives at your home. He will contact you regarding the time and date. 

Don't disappoint me, 

XL 

From WILLIAM ZUMA: 

Dear Sir, 

Thanks a lot for your e-mail. But i want to tell you that the SMITH you are talking about is not the one I told you to contact. Please feel free to contact him so that we will know the next step to follow. And for your idea of involving so many people in this transaction is not good to me because of the confidentiality of this business. 

Please let us make things easy for us, contact (Bar.)MICHEAL SMITH. PLease contact him as soon as possible he is a good man. Please contact him and get back to me immediately. 

Please i need your private telephone and fax numbers for easy comunication. 

Beast Regard 

WILLIAM ZUMA 

From Xavier Lipshitz: 

Zuma! You incompetent tit! You question my security precautions while emailing me from an unsecured location?! 

Yes, unsecured ö my private investigators have just finished tracing your IP number to your ISP, and have verified that you are emailing me from an unsecured location! 

I don't expect you to take precautions as I do ö circling the earth in a supersonic jet, accessing the Internet via wireless connection. (Guess who owns the satellite off which my email, your email, and millions of others bounce? I do!). However, I do expect a modicum of professionalism from my associates, which I am not finding in you. 

And now you want to play a shell game with your lawyer! "My lawyer's (Bar.)MICHEAL SMITH," you write. Now he's not, now he's just a "good guy" acting as a character witness on your behalf. 

This is character: My father was a soldier of fortune who eventually lost his health, but not his bloodlust. He spent his twilight years working double-shifts in an Argentinean abattoir. There, he met my mother, an office girl 53 years his junior. After an evening's dalliance within the abattoir, I was conceived. Soon after my parents married. They were so strapped for money, my mother worked into her ninth month, and I was born in the abattoir. 

My heritage is blood: I was conceived in blood, born in blood ö I have blood coursing through my veins! 

While you, Zuma ö you embody everything that is wrong with contemporary crime! No finesse, no style, just two itchy palms and shifty eyes. 

Your insolence will cost you ö my half of our transaction just went up to 72.33%, with all expenses, including my wireless Web connection bill for the next year, coming out of your end. I'm ordering dinner from a Cairo pizzeria later and that's coming out of your end, as well. 

You endanger the whole deal by consorting with an unmasked member of law enforcement, and then chastise me about security? You were taken-in by one of the phoniest covernames I've ever seen ö "(Bar.) MICHEAL SMITH"! ö and then accuse me of "involving so many people." Well holy shit, maybe I should have introduced myself as "John Wayne" to make you feel more comfortable. 

I've dealt with amateurs like you before ö you'll take your end of this transaction and buy a car, an inflatable woman, a case of beer, and then blow the rest in some casino. 

Listen Zuma! I'm 108 years old. After years of drunkenness and wandering, I began my billion-dollar empire in World War II, paying draftees a nickel per day to mail home army jeeps one piece at a time. I have the patience of Job. The tenacity of Thor. I amassed 428 whole jeeps through the mail in four years. I shit hundred dollar bills. Don't fuck with me. 

So, mucky-muck, scrape yourself up off the floor, salvage this transaction. There is a park near your home. Go there at midnight on Wednesday. In the middle of the park, where there usually are no trees, you will see a tree that appears to be newly planted ö that will be my attorney in disguise. Deal with him as you would deal with me. 

... and that airplane you hear overhead ö it may be my jet. I've instructed my pilot to unburden the toilet tank while over your neighborhood. 

XL 

From Xavier Lipshitz: 

So, Zuma, you ended up with cold feet and no stomach for our deal. I can't say I'll miss your fractured notes, your inarticulate gimme-gimme-gimme ö and I'll never understand why the stink of BO and bad breath filled the room whenever I opened your email messages. 

I pity you, Zuma ö an imbecile with no hands trying to open a tin can. You'll blacken your eyes and knock out your teeth before you get the damned thing open. You're incompetent, you don't write good English, and you're as greedy as a badger with its balls on fire. 

By all means, cut off contact with me, go back to your one-room hovel, eat your warmed-over gruel while watching "Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island" on your flickering black and white TV; your grim-set face slicked with sweat, your sputtering fan that's missing three blades droning in the background. 

Maybe I'll pitch an idea to you: 

I've been thinking of opening a zoo filled with the great incompetents of the world, so people could visit and feel better about they're own petty foibles. I'd have most of the Russian government there, Calcutta bureaucrats, one of the President George W. Bush marionettes, a few British driving instructors, South American police officers, Catholic cardinals, Enron executives ö and you, William Zuma. 

Iâll call the place MONKEYS FUCKING FOOTBALLS. Iâll have everyoneâs hands removed and leave you all unopened cans of beans from which to feed yourselves. 

My goal is to have the world's worst brain surgeon and world's worst rocket scientist on exhibit. They're out there somewhere. Maybe you've already offered them a cut of $15 million US ö we could work together locating them. 

In your first message you wrote that the owner of the bank account you planned to plunder, this Smith B. Andreas, is dead. Christ, Zuma, I wouldn't trust you if you told me the sun rose this morning. By God, I'll bet this Andreas isn't dead at all. Probably just traveling the world, letting his money gather interest. I hope he comes back for his money. What will you do then? 

Any other Ralph Cramden get-rich-quick schemes on the horizon? Save it! I'm already rich, and you have no capacity to be rich. Glad I learned here and now that you have no guts, rather than in a gun battle in some Capetown pool hall. 

But still, give me your address. Maybe I'll send you a postcard next time I'm in Sun City. 

And don't say I never did you any favors. Remember your lawyer "(Bar.)MICHEAL SMITH"? Don't bother contacting him again ö his head is in a bucket under my desk. And that dossier on you he was compiling? I have it right here. I haven't decided whether I'm going to send it to Director M. Kruger, your first grade teacher, or MAD magazine. 

See you in the funny papers, 

XL 

From william zuma 

After reading your E mail,I personal decid to take them to one hospital and the informetion which I recieved from the doctor is that you XAVIER LIPSHITZ is being worried from mianial disturbed,so i believe that you are no more alive by now .infact if you still alive it proves that you one of the Afghanistan Tarrioust which means your day is numbered . Therefor what a useless man are you living uncomfortable live ,infact i dont kown what you are still doing on earth what stops you not to go and see your grang fathers where so ever their are folish element.you cant.even be capable to eat three timesin a day but you dreaming to be one of the royal rambo do you know what you are,you a native doctor who can not be ebel to give hims self medicine then you are busy looking for somebody to help folish rulars ,you cant not have rest untill you clear your old debt which you are still owning even me . If you are still alive write but if i do not hear from you that means you have gone. 

Zuma 

From Xavier Lipshitz: 

Jesus Christ, Zuma! Did you drop your keyboard down a flight of stairs? The typing job on your last message was more than I could bear. I had the message analyzed by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Nairobi, and they verified that you were, indeed, attempting to communicate in English. Maybe you didnât have your fingers on the "home row" ö I donât know. 

Let me get this straight ö you're wondering if I'm still alive? Surely, I am. It's been a rocky road, of course, living to 108 years of age. During my lifetime Iâve undergone 22 heart transplants, 14 liver transplants, innumerable kidney, lung, and eye transplants, 93 skin graphs, a partial frontal lobotomy, penile extension surgery, penile reduction surgery. In 1952, I had one of my lungs removed so that a second liver could be placed within me ö those 14-cocktail business dinners take their toll on the most proficient tycoons. Over the decades Iâve also had my blood changed from type O, to type A, to type B-. Iâve had extensive cosmetic surgery, too. Iâm a vain bastard, Zuma! As Paul McCartney once sang, "I'm not half the man I used to be..." 

But I'm completely and utterly alive. 

And you surmise that I am operating out of Afghanistan? Wrong again, Zuma! My skin is very delicate, and cannot bear the sun. Also, Iâm allergic to sand, camel dander, and living in the 11th Century. What the hellâs a "Tarrioust" ö a tourist who reads Tarot cards? 

Now tell me, who's pissed in your cappuccino? Are you chafing under the weight of that $15 million U.S.? Who wouldnât? But letâs no longer be coy about who you are, and what youâre doing. You donât really work for the ABSA, and youâre surely no "auditor" ö the only "auditing" I imagine you doing is to the contents of the toilet when youâve finished using it. No, you are a minion, raising money for God-knows-who, for God-knows-what; a malevolent cyber-jackal looking to con, cheat, fleece, screw, fuck, rip-off unsuspecting sons of bitches. And look where thatâs gotten you ö sitting in an un-airconditioned room filled with computers, breathing the farts and BO of two dozen other scam artists for twelve or sixteen hours a day. Suffering constant beatings from your "employers" for not meeting your quota, having nothing more for your meals than Fresca and Triscuits· Christ, I can well imagine your obsession with this mythical $15 million U.S. 

Then, on your one day-off per month, you took our email correspondence to a hospital. Let me guess the name of the doctor with whom you consulted at the hospital ö Dr. Michael Smith. Zuma, I can diagnose your trouble from my supersonic jet ö you suffer from anemic pseudonym. Meaning, there are too many "Smiths" in your lexicon ö Christ, youâre going to have to visit the witch doctor in the next village to find out what these words mean! 

Zuma, at the bottom of this all I see you as the unwashed, brain-damaged Negro son from the interracial marriage I never had. Thereâs a bond here. I sense that you havenât received much guidance or advice in life, so Iâm going to pass along three bits of wisdom to you, with the hope that you will use them to drag yourself out of this mire-pit and become a human being: 

• Donât piss in the wind
• Donât take any wooden drachmas
• A douche is not a German deuce coup 

Your great great "grang" father in spirit, 

Xavier Lipshitz