This is a story that really happened to me.

Back in the good old days, I worked for a prominent money transfer company. It is good to know that I was very well trained and experienced in all fields, but never trained to handle ignorant people.

One fine day a chap in his 40s came to our counter, he wanted to transfer £10,000 to Midland bank in the UK. The front desk clerk referred her to me since it was out of her competence to transact in such amounts.

I called this person in and accomodated him in our board room.

"So", I started off, " How can I be of assistance". The chap with a tremmoring voice replied "I wish to transfer  10k to open an account in the UK with Midland Bank, You see.." he paused for a while "I just inherited 10,000,000 dollars and the solicitors made arrangments to send the funds to the Midland since they have a close relationship with them"

All this was very intriguing but as a septic I replied " I am sorry for you loss.." the chap suddenly interrupted me "oh, no need to, I didn't know this person, so I do not feel sad or anything" Bells started ringing and lights flashing, this was quite obvious, but I decided to play along.

"So how did you know this person, was he a distant relative or a family friend?" "No, i never heard of him until I received the letter" he replied,

I continued, "Sir, we require the following documentation in order to proceed with the transaction, A death certificate, Copy of the will and bank letter confirming your account deposit request", I thought that by imposing this, the person would simply walk out and realize on his own merit that this was simply a scam, but, to my surprise he provided all the documentation I asked for. The death certificate was from Cuba and so was the will, all stamped and look relatively genuine. Then came the letter, which was an email sent by the bank.  The usual words acknowledging the bank account and all, but, what gave it all up was the Email address it was sent from and Email which read This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . That is unusual, a bank using a hotmail account, no fancy domain names, just a plain hotmail account.

I thought that this farce had gone slightly too far, so I replied "Kindly issue a cheque for £5,000 payable to CHILD IN NEED FOUNDATION and as soon as you leave this building go and give it to them,  after that go home and thank your lucky stars you still have a further £5,000 in your pocket"

Rudely the chap replied "I shall take my business elsewhere" and left the building

I guess Napoleon was right when he said ""The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance.""