42nd Avenue

West River Road, Minneapolis.

Sanford Middle School, Minneapolis.

The “Lake Wobegon” Scam Artist?

An interesting e-mail came over the transom today:

It’s my pleasure to invite you to my Father’s 70th Birthday Thanks giving service which is going to take place at Geneva United Methodist Church Geneva, Minnesota,united States on May 30th 2008, please Let us know if your compnay will be available on that day to take the Photography service for us and any other necessary things at the event,And get back to us with your package for like 5 hours, presently am not in the state but it’s my duty to take care of this part that’s why, I have to contacted you myself. Let me know if you can receive your payment with a CHEQUE from my client in the states.

There are a few things that are tip-offs here that something’s not on the up-and-up: the payment by “CHEQUE” (not how it’s spelled in Geneva, MN …), the stilted English, the suggestion that I might be an event photographer (take a look at the blurry Holga pictures and strange night pictures, and tell me if you’d really want me anywhere near your father’s birthday “Thanks giving” party…). But I find this almost touching in its lack of ambition: no crown prince of Swaziland, no royal family of Ghana, no lottery winnings from Spain or Ireland, just some guy at the United Methodist church in a little town near Albert Lea. Have the scam artists given up on their dreams and decided to settle down in Lake Wobegon?

A similar trick is outlined here: Scams on Artists, mnartists.org. The trick usually involves a cashier’s check that turns out to be bad, though after you’ve deposited it into your account, and a portion of that bad check being sent back to the miscreant (I’ll pay you $4,000, you keep $950 and send me the change . . .). And since it plays on the dreams and aspirations of someone with an artistic bent, it’s particularly cruel and nasty. Over at Daily Dickinson I pointed out another scam artist put to shame, this time by Emily Dickinson, or someone rather like her. It’s this sort of stuff that sucks the fun right out of the Internet.