DOT CON

A British comedian dedicates his days to drafting playfully funny conversations with the authors of scam emails.

Veitch’s penchant for scamming the scammer originated with a comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and continued with a few TED talks. In this collection, first published in the U.K. in 2015, the author describes how he creates a persona tailored to each weird phishing email he gets. “I think of the spam folder not as Pandora’s box, but as a costume shop in which you can play and play at being whoever and whatever you wish,” he writes. “If only for a time. Last week, I was a bank robber, a pilot and the one-time confidant of a beautiful Arabian princess—and that was just Monday.” In the fitfully interesting email exchanges that follow, Veitch tortures the scammers, whether he needs to pose as a hedge fund manager or a “fruit consultant.” They vary widely in length, from “The Sheriff and the Vacuum Cleaner,” simply twisted to form surreal poetry, to a lengthy conversation with “Winnie Mandela,” concerned about her husband’s health. “Given that Nelson died three months ago I’d describe his health condition as fairly serious,” Veitch retorts. Whether the scammers originate in the Philippines, Dubai, or Nigeria, the comic’s ultimate goal is to drive them to profanity-laden rage-quitting, which he does more and more successfully as the exchanges stack up. As the scammers arrive offering gold, fortunes, and even romance, they soon find their own scams turned around on them as Veitch variously demands poems, declarations of love, and a blurb for his illusory book, Sensitive Passion. It’s a weird niche, but the author’s absurdist approach and enthusiasm for his work make for unpredictably funny reading.

An amusing, oddball compilation of email exchanges with princesses, smugglers, and other charlatans.