Spam works, in part, because it appeals to people’s private anxieties (weight loss, penis size, depression and so forth). Here’s a spam message that appealed not so much to anxiety of mine, but certainly a love:
From: Ms. Gwen Shapiro
Canada Lottery-Soccer World Cup 2010 Promotional Draw 1550 Princess Street Kingston, ON, Canada, K7M 9E3
Email: 2010worldcup18@canada.comAttention: Customer AFRSA680
Ref: EAAL/851OYHI/05
Batch No. Lotto 6/49WINNING NOTIFICATION
The Canadian Government sponsors this lottery for the
promotion of the 2010 Soccer World cup to be hosted in South
Africa.We happily announce to you the draw of the
Euro-Afro-American Sweepstake Lottery International Programs
held on Saturday 1st April 2006 in Essex United Kingdom and
Ontario Canada. Your e-mail address attached to Ticket
Number: B9564 75604545 100, with Serial Number 46563760 drew
the winning numbers 4/6/8/12/34/38 with a bonus Number 14,
for LOTTO 6/49 under the choice of the lottery in the 2nd
category of daily three.
Later in the email, I’m offered ye olde US$820,000.00. Bastards.
There’s a clever twist in this spam message that I haven’t noticed before. The only URLs in the message are legit. They point to this lottery results page on Canada.com, which appears to confirm your ‘winning numbers’.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
A lot of 419 scammers use legit links and email addresses to pass themselves off as “the real thing”. I’ve played along with a few before, long enough that they’ve sent me a video of the cash they want to “share with me”. Good for a laugh, but too much work in the long run.
419 eater (http://www.419eater.com/) is a good site to see the results of people who have the patience to really jerk these.. well, jerks… around.
It’s weird how targetted spam can be. I sometimes get spam for writing related things and events.
My boyfriend got a spam with the subject line “whatever” and a very innocent looking sender. He opened it and the message was “Take Viagra or die.” Now that’s a hard sell.
Thanks for publishing the scam & fraud details,’cause I got a similar message on friday the 27th Oct.’06. from the so called Canadian lottery mumbo jumbo.All I can thank them fo is feeling like a millionaire for a few days…until I got sober from the euphoria.Sometimes we see what we want to see and not what it really is…
Here’s one for you. I get an email from this “JERK” every other day promoting different phoney stocks. As soon as it hits my inbox it drops in a snooping program each time to different places in my computer. I end up running three virus scans as soon as I get my email to clean up the mess. So far he has used 13 different “TO” names with my email address, 13 different “FROM” names with 13 different “FROM” addressess and to top it off 13 different location I.D. numbers. Oh, as Well the “RETURN” names and addresses are always different some U.S., Canadian and European. I’ve used any information I found in the emails to block them so far with no success. I also “BOUNCE” them but I think the are probably going to places they shouldn’t. I sent copies to “Norton” asking for help so far i”ve been ignored. As for the “JERK” May his butt be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels.
And to boot I just received a million dollars U.S. from Canada Lottery-Soccer World Cup 2010 Promotional Draw
Im such a lucky guy.