| Review: Greetings in Jesus Name! |
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The author, Mike Berry aka Shiver Metimbers has been running a web site called www.419eater.com for some time and 'Greetings in Jesus Name!' subtitled 'The ScamBaiter Letters', contains some of the highlights from his various activities designed to send a little of the pain back to the scammers Mike Berry, like most of us has received an awful lot of scam emails imploring him to help some poor widow or other to expatriate their late husbands millions from sundry overseas countries. Unlike most of us, who simply hit the delete key and move on (or in a few cases actually fall for the sorry tale and end up paying thousands of pounds to a scammer) Mike Berry decided to hit back and have a bit of fun in the process.
A typical example of the scammer attack process is the sorry tale entitled 'I Pray to Die Henceforth'. Here Shiver Metimbers pretends to be Gillian Anderson (yes, the X Files one) and after exchanging a few emails and sending some pictures of the real Gillian Anderson, finds his prey has fallen in love with his alter-ego. After a few emails he brings in his pet dog named Fags only to have him die shortly after. In order to help her cope with her loss, 'Gillian' asks th scammer to show his feelings for her by photographing himself with a large board saying 'I love Fags'. Priceless. Later on he introduces one David Duchovny as her PA to further muddy the waters whilst arranging for her to visit her new lovestruck suitor. We particularly liked the cruel imagination that goes in to some of the tasks the author sets the various scammers in order to meet his requirments before he deals with them. One writes out an entire Harry Potter book long hand, another carves a stunning replica of a Commodore 64 in wood. Alas we don't get to see an example of the Harry Potter pages but the C64 is there in all its woody glory. One of the best aspects of the various cases presented is the attention to detail. The author fakes some really convincing looking travel documents, Western Union (the scammer's preferred untraceable payment system) paperwork and in some cases, complete newspaper front pages describing the death of the person he's claiming to be. Greetings in Jesus Name! isn't currently available in the US although we understand it may be at some point in the future so for our American readers, keep an eye open or order it from Amazon UK This is a great book. The author has produced a cracking read that gives you a lovely warm feeling that for once, the scammers get it back in their face. The only negative is that all the cases presented and more are available for free on the author's own website so you have to ask what value does a book version add? We'd say quite a lot. It would make a brilliant gift for anyone with a warped sense of . For those who don't like reading too much off a screen, you can't beat the convenience of a proper book, especially for reading on your daily commute. Just be prepared for more people than usual peering over your shoulder! |
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 22 January 2007 ) | |||||||||
You may be wondering what on earth a book with this title is doing on PC Book Review. The title is in fact a reference to a typical opening sentence from of those wonderful scam letters beloved of certain African tricksters that come under the banner of 419 scams - named after the particular piece of legislation designed to counter them.
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