Word: scheme
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mailer’s experiences may also justify the prophetic authority he claims at the book’s end. The dust-jacket has a red, white and blue color scheme, and after a history of literature’s decline and fall in America—culminating in the judgment that with Camp’s advent, “literature had then failed”—he writes, “Nothing less than a fresh vision of the ongoing and conceivably climactic war between God and the Devil can slake our moral thirst now that...
...recent scheme, an e-mail or letter arrives, supposedly from a member of the U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. The writer claims to have come across $36 million in Taliban drug money, and he is looking for help sneaking it out of the country (apparently in the spirit of the movie, “Three Kings”). Even more despicable are letters that offer a chance to get hold of cash found in the collapse of the World Trade Center or to collect on phony life-insurance policies for servicemen killed in the Pentagon attack...
...letters taking advantage of the war on terror may be new, but the basic scheme goes back to the early 1980s, when it first started to emerge in Nigeria. Named after this West African country, the “Nigeria scam” presents itself as a way to steal millions of dollars from disorganized, foreign governments. Its myriad permutations all follow a general pattern: an unsolicited e-mail arrives from a stranger claiming to be a government official, usually in Nigeria. He has come across ten to 60 million dollars that are unaccounted for in the government?...
Sure, he’s a stranger. Sure, he’s trying to involve you in an international money-laundering scheme. But he’s got a Yahoo! account so he must be legitimate...
...that they are not the ones who initiated the scam, nor does is it matter that they are often not legally culpable, since the money never appears. None of this diminishes the moral deceit of their actions. Like their Nigerian co-conspirators, the Americans who take part in this scheme should be dismissed as dishonest cheats, not pitied as victims...