Nigerian spammers are now trying to profit from its woes, according to Bronte Capital’s John Hempton, who (ahem, ahem, cough, cough) found the following in his inbox on Wednesday:
From: Dudley Caruthers Esq (Barrister at Law)
Subject: BP Related Agreement Entitlement
E-mail:Dear Friend
I am the private solicitor for Mr Tony Hayward, the esteemed Chairman and Chief executive of British Petroleum. My client has various personal and family related holdings of BP stock and options. Due to his faithful long standing service to BP the total value of his holdings amounts to in excess of 100m pounds sterling. Mr Heywood is a British citizen but it has been my sorrowful duty to advise him that his personal and family wealth is at great risk of being wrongfully confiscated by US authorities acting extra-territorially under special powers authorised by the US government and with the secret consent of a supine UK political and legal establishment.
We will spare you the rest and skip to the end of the email. (Emphasis ours).
If you do recollect our agreement then it is now necessary to transfer the 80m pounds of cash proceeds to yourself which are after payment of a 20m pound advisory and arrangement fee for the services rendered by my firm. Transfer of the cash will only occur to you upon you executing the correct documents which are (i) the force majeure beneficiary transfer agreement (ii) a statutory declaration that the force majeure beneficiary transfer agreement was properly entered into as a verbal agreement in January 2002 and (iii) details of your Australian bank account including account name, password and account number and most critically an agreement between yourself and myself as trustee for Hayward related entities granting the trustee the right to claw back 50% (40m pounds) of the transfer at any time and requiring you to escrow the 40m pounds in a separate account.
I sincerely trust that you will search your memory and recollect that we met in Sydney in 2002 and recollect the nature of our agreement.
Please contact me at my firm’s Nigerian subsidiary’s offices at the address below such that we can act with the speed required of us.
(Note to angry US Congressmen and/or Presidents: this isn’t real. Hayward isn’t really trying to find a safe haven for his assets. Not yet anyway).
Related links:
Danger! Knife falls even further – FT Alphaville
Danger! Falling knife – FT Alphaville
The BP Oil Spill Re-Enacted By Cats In 1 Minute – LOLFed.com
The value case for cutting BP’s payout – FT Editorial