Oddies and endies in e-mail

I'm always surprised that so many people in other countries have died and left me, little ol' me, bunches and baskets of money! Here's today's catch. Did you get one?

"On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Engineer Reinhard Hermann, I once again try to notify you as my earlier letter to you returned undelivered. I hereby attempt to reach you again by this same email address on the WILL. I wish to notify you that Late Engr. R. Hermann made you a Beneficiary to his WILL. He left the sum of Seventeen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($17,500.000.00 USD) to you in the codicil and last testament to his WILL. This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true. Being a widely traveled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were recommended to him by one of his numerous Friends abroad who wished you good."

The spelling and sentence structure is improving however, (must have out of work college students employed in these schemes) and this guy was UK not Nigeria, and an engineer, member of the Helicopter Society, and a philanthropist, not just a scumbag prince or potentate. Still, the capitalization of nouns doesn't look right. But maybe that's the UK way.

When Fed Ex called for our address yesterday I was hesitant. That's another scam going around, although that one usually comes via e-mail--a "delivery problem." But in that case, the insurance company had left out part of our street name, and since there are 15 or so streets around here with a similar name, and ours doesn't appaear on some maps because we are private, they couldn't find us.

One of the Christian groups to which I subscribe has apparently sold their mailing list--or maybe an organization went belly up and some other company got possession, because I've been receiving a really odd collection of end-times, money appeals, and book announcements in the past week or two. Groups I've never heard of and haven't visited their web sites. Although data mining is very sophisticated these days. I just hate to visit Amazon and then have the site tell me where I've been and what I looked at. It's just creepy. Like each click has a little RFID embedded. Since I visit Christian bloggers and many of them have ads, and you have to leave an e-mail address to comment, it's possible these companies found me that way.

But Helicopter Society? The UK philanthropist? Who falls for this?