Nigerian Princess

(A note from our lawyers: The names herein have been changed to protect the identities of those involved. All references to places and events are real, and have not been altered. The following paragraphs represent the sole opinion of their author, and shall not be construed as an endorsement of Sarah Palin. By reading this sentence, you agree to our Terms and Conditions. This disclaimer is not intended to be a factual statement.)

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Our friend Jean-Claude Chirac recently met the love of his life online. This should come as no surprise to those who have seen advertisements for online dating - it's a guarantee with a $49.99/month membership! This girl - call her Monique - sounded positively lovely. She didn't speak french, but as we've learned from like every romantic comedy, this no barrier to true love (or the masterful manipulation of Google Translate). I'm going to marry this woman, he informed us. It was a picture-perfect story, a veritable romance for the ages.

About a week and a half ago, Jean-Claude asked us to do him a favor. Monique was currently living in Senegal, he said, and had asked him to call her to talk on the phone! However, she apparently didn't have a cell phone herself; instead, we were to call her pastor (who also did not speak french), and he would pass the phone to her. The whole process seemed a little convoluted, but we've long since stopped trying to make sense of everything that happens here. Sarah called and got the pastor, who told us to call back in 45 minutes. Eventually we got Monique on the phone, and thus nurtured Jean-Claude's budding romance.

Everything seemed to be unfolding "most splendidly" (excuse the speech pattern, we've been listening to a lot of BBC radio recently), until we got a worried phone call from Jean-Claude at almost 11pm as we were preparing for bed. "Baya, I need to talk to you," he said, "I'm sitting outside Robert's Coiffure drinking tea." Sarah got dressed again and went down to find him, but we secretly feared the worst.

When Sarah came back, she explained the story to me. After several weeks of flirtatious courtship online, Monique had finally spilled her life story to Jean-Claude, the pain and emotion of her ordeal cutting through the emoticons and links to LOLCats. Although she is currently living in Senegal, she was not born there. She's actually a refugee from the Rwandan genocide, where she had to flee after her whole family was ruthlessly murdered. But, as luck would have it, her father had left 7.6 million pounds for her in an account with the Royal Bank of Scotland! She just needs someone (outside of Senegal) with a bank account to accept the transfer of money, which she cannot accept directly because of her refugee status.

Needless to say, we were ecstatic -- our friend had just hit the jackpot! With the 18% cut she promised him, Jean-Claude could easily live and support his family in extreme luxury for the rest of their lives. All he had to do was send his bank account information to M. Nelson Smith, a representative of the Royal Bank of Scotland, who could be reached at either of his official email addresses, rbscustomer_nelson@escite.co.uk or nelson_rbs@switched.com. Monique had already informed the bank that he would be writing them; all Jean-Claude had to do was send his bank information.

We immediately realized there was a major problem with this story. You see, Jean-Claude doesn't have a bank account! Aaaaaand, it's a scam literally straight out of the textbooks. We tried to convince Jean-Claude of this. He agreed it seemed a little odd, and didn't understand why she would want to steal from him when he doesn't really have any money to steal. Plus, I think he really wanted to hold on to a little hope that this woman he had fallen in love with, who he had a 98% match with on eHarmony.com, was in fact real.

Finally, Sarah googled the story Monique had fed him, and found several web sites exposing the scam. It's remarkable how things like this can destroy your faith in humanity. As Sarah wrote back to her in an email (sent with Jean-Claude's permission):

Monique, this is clearly a scam. I have looked it up on the internet and seen that the same thing has been done to hundreds of other people. Do not contact me again, and shame on you for using the horrible things that happened to people in Rwanda to try to steal people's money.

And thus concludes the story of how a Rwandan refugee turned out to be a Nigerian Princess. I didn't think these things actually happened to real people.