Dear Nigerian lawyer overseeing my dead unknown relative's will

A kindly lawyer in Benin informs me that my recently-dead uncle has left me millions of dollars. I bite.

Text reads:

Dear Klerk.

I am Advocate David Amaugo. A personal attorney to Eng. Michael H. Klerk (my client), from your country who was Director of engineering consultant here in Republic of Benin. On the 5th of March,2010, my client lost his life as a result of Brain cancer, at Benin Medical Center. Since the death of my Client, i have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives until now, so i decide to contact you and need your urgent Assistance to present you to the bank so that the proceed of my client's fund valued about $10,7M (Ten Million Seven Hundred Thousand United Dollars.) can be paid Into Your Bank Account immediately before the funds will be confiscated by the Bank here.

After reading this message, reply me with your direct mobile telephone number... Your full address...Your age....and your occupation so that i can send further details to you for better understanding and also tell you how we can legally proceed the claim. Upon the fund transfer into your bank account both of us will share it 50% for you 50% for me. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through.

I am waiting your urgent response.

Yous sincerely,

Barrister David A

---Ends---

I reply.

Text reads:

Dear Barrister David,

I was heartbroken and yet grateful for your caring, kind-hearted and obviously not exploitative email. It’s a true tragedy that old Uncle Mike has passed away – to tell the truth, I never really knew him (not at all, not even that he existed, to be honest) and although we had our obvious differences (for example, our surnames) I always thought that if I’d just gotten to know him better, like what his favourite colour is, what his hopes and dreams and fears were, or even who the hell he is, we’d have gotten on famously.

Honestly, though, I was expecting this email. Just last week my best friend Eric got an email informing him that his unknown uncle in Nigeria had died of cancer, and the week before that it was my other good friend Jess. For years now, all my friends, family and work colleges have had to go through the difficult and harrowing process of getting an email from an East African Lawyer telling them of their unknown relative’s demise at the hand of dreaded cancer. Since I was a young boy, I’ve been 100% certain that, somewhere in the world, there is a family member I’ve never met who will die of brain cancer and will me, his last remaining relative, his millions. It was only a matter of time before my poor unknown uncle Mikey met this exact fate.

Of course, some idiots I know on the internet are trying to convince me that this is a scam – perhaps in a blackhearted attempt to take Uncle Mike’s millions for themselves, the soulless fucks. But we have to ask ourselves – if this is a scam, then how come you’re an experienced, trusted lawyer in possession of an internationally recognised degree that qualifies you to deal with the difficult intricacies of international inheritance laws and the complicated string of transnational tax policies that govern the transfer of wealth across national barriers?

If this is an attempt to “empty my entire bank account and leave me in crippling debt”, as these imbecilic nonbelievers claim, then how come you’re such a good, kind-hearted person who would move hell and high water just to fulfil the last will and testament of a lonely dying man. I mean, what kind of low-life, scum-eating, piece of shit, soulless asshat would take advantage of the trauma of the loss of a loved one in an exploitative, black-hearted attempt to cash in on someone’s lack of internet savvy and ruin their lives by plunging them into dire financial straits? Obviously not you.

Please find attached to this email all my personal banking details, three signed and police certified copies of my passport, identity, several telephone and utilities bills going back several few months, and my original birth certificate. No, not a copy – the original. It was tough forcing this physical copy of it into the internet, but if you can track down one man’s sole surviving relative across nearly 5000 miles, well, what is a little digital-physical barrier in comparison?

My best wishes. Please let me know as soon as you can send me the money. I’m writing a book about why Geocentrism is real and how vaccines cause autism and I desperately need money to fund my lifestyle while I cherrypick articles and discredited hack “research” to present as proof of my theories.

Yours sincerely,

Anti-vaxxer, Soothsayer, your loving friend and co-inheritor,

Matthew Klerk

Celebrities unite to raise 0.00001% of their net worth for charity

pic: wikimedia commons

Non-government charity organisations like OxFam and AfriCare have a new contender to deal with in the Save Africa campaign, after dozens of celebrities, signers, actors and politicians combined forces in a super-fund-raiser concert series aimed at raising up to one ten thousandth of a percent of their overall combined worth for African Aid Organisations and charities.

“This is big,” said coordinator of the fund-raising initiative, Bono. “We expect to raise in charity donations almost as much as what we spend in a year on cars and clothes. Every year we make tens of billions of dollars, so it’s just nice to be able to host a concert and make our fans give us almost a fraction of a minute shard of our net worth in ticket sales to give to starving Africans.”

Stars like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Madonna and Lady Gaga will take to stages across America all throughout this week to raise awareness and millions of dollars, with a portion of that awareness and money going not just to their latest albums but also to a variety of charities.

“I’m just so glad I can do my part,” said amateur wrecking ball operator and pioneer of twerking for white people, Miley Cyrus. “Africa and these kinds of charities have been a huge part of my message and so close to my heart, ever since I learnt where Africa was and also that it isn’t a country nearly two years ago.”

Not all stars, however, were so pleased.

"Those mooching fucks in Somalia have never come to one of my concerts," said voice of our generation Kanye West, "why should I come to their help?"

Even some African citizens have stressed their displeasure.

"Two of our biggest industries are getting lots of money from guilty Europeans and Americans, and all the thousands of dollars we earn making teary-eyed poverty-porn commercials involving distended bellies and crying mothers that we produce for foreign aid companies," said Minister of Film in Southern Sudan, May Kafylm. "If these celebrities solve hunger and poverty, we will actively destroying the only source of income for tens of thousands of families across the Drought Belt."

In any case, in light of these announcements, dozens of recording studios and production companies have announced their unequivocal support of the concerts, saying that they were a wonderful opportunity to raise money for sad-looking black people on TV.

“We care a lot about African countries like Mozambia and Zimbalawi,” they said. “Some people might think that these concerts are just another opportunity to try and humanise our stars who barely even live on this planet or know what a normal life is like, or make them seem more loveable, caring and humane than they really in the eyes of crowds of mindless fans who idolise their every fart, but it isn’t. This is about charity. And giving. And a bunch of other nice-sounding words.”

However, many thousands of starving Africans have reported their happiness after some stars announced that they would be airlifting crates of their latest In Concert DVDS and albums into their countries.

“I love stars and rappers and their struggle songs, like with Drake and his ‘started at the bottom now we here’,” said one Ethiopian man. “Some of these stars lived with a dollar a day in their pockets, maybe eating out of bins and sleeping on concrete, having to go to performance venues night after night to perform and earn a name for themselves. Someday, I wish my children will live in such extreme wealth and leisure like that. Imagine that, actually eating – and out of an American bin!”

Next Nkandla to be built entirely out of money

Following the controversial announcements by Jacob Zuma of another State-funded expensive money-hole to be built next to his existing State-funded money-hole, the ANC has today assured South Africans of all kinds (beloved comrades and counterrevolutionary sellouts alike) that this next project would be constructed entirely out of pure money and thus “far, far cheaper than before.”

“We might have gone just a teensy, tiny bit over budget that last time, you know, what with the fire pools and security chicken coops and anti-theft cattle kraals and defense tuckshops,” said head architect Affyieu de Zynflauz, “but this time around we’ll save millions and millions of Rands by just making the whole house out of money.”

He explained

"Before, we had a lot of 'scope creep' and disagreements about budgets and final costs. We'd put aside money for bricks and cement, only to see that it actually cost double. This way, if we want a million rand worth of bricks, it will definitely only cost us a million rand. Plus architect's fee, of course."

He laid out his plans, detailing how each cost-cutting method would save stacks of taxpayers’ rands.

“Gone are the days of bricks and concrete blocks and foundations,” he said. “We’ll just get stacks and stacks for R200 notes and tie them together with elastic bands and use those. There’s a reason why they are called ‘bricks’ of money, don’t you know? And for concrete we won’t use expensive concrete and mortar. We’ll just shred thousand-Rand government bonds into a slurry of molten gold and diamond powder. That will give a strong foundation unlike any other, unmatched in its low, low cost.”

pictured: the bricks to be used on the main bedroom,
which are being kept in the Federal Reserve

For the roofing and fencing, however, de Zynflauz said they were still at their wits end.

“Right now we’re trying to decide between hand-carved slats imported from Italy made out of illegal whale and elephant ivory, or a more traditional and relatively less costly fibrous matting made from pounded Black Rhino horn. Right now, we’re not sure which is cheaper.”

Meanwhile, the country’s economists have praised the decision, saying that they are glad that “some sense has finally kicked in.”

“This is what we have been waiting for,” said Economist Magazine editor Luke Satgraafs. “A leadership that not only learns from its mistakes, but one that has the ability to see how they have been wasting billions of Rands and cutting that needless and wasteful expenditure with measured, reasonable alterations to their building plans.”

Economists now predict that the Super Nkandla will cost only half as much as the last one.

“We’re going to see thousands and thousands of Rands made immediately available for other public projects and infrastructure and also immediately diverted into personal checking accounts and siphoned off to inlaws and nephews loosely tied into the construction company who won the tender,” said Satgraafs. “The GDP, IRI and EXP, as well as a whole other bunch of acronyms, should double, because graphs and numbers.”

However, since the announcement, even President Jacob Zuma himself has stepped forward to assure South Africans that this next project will be much less wasteful.

“I’m even considering having a normal-people toilet installed in one of the thirty-eight guest rooms,” he said in a show of humility and personal connection unseen since his inauguration. “You know, maybe in the one by the pure platinum emergency fire extinguisher Jacuzzi, or in the three-bedroom house where we store emergency air next to the anti-intruder bowling alley and emergency panic shopping mall?”

When asked for clarity, he said, “no, not ‘a normal-people toilet’ as in ‘a reeking cat-hole in the ground that hasn’t been cleaned out for thirty years’. You know, a real, proper flushing one. With a shower next to it… on second thoughts, don’t mention the shower. Zapiro might be reading this.”