Phish of the day

So a message from the IRS got through the spam filter.

It has a couple of attached forms and the entire message is:

"Please see the attachment make sure you fill all the columns and send fax to...."

I mean, can't they find somebody who has ANY clue about our language?

Hey Ivan, give me a call; maybe we can work out a freelance copyediting deal.

But it's funny how they found me at work.

Funny how I'm a non-resident alien and as such I'm entitled to not be taxed on certain income or something like that (I counted on our internal network security being up to par and actually opened the .doc forms -- I wonder if I'll get in trouble for that).

Funny that if I just fill out attached form and fax it to the IRS, things will be fine. Of course, the form wants my bank account information.

Actually, what's not funny is that this is one of the more sophisticated ones. The forms are almost error-free and even in correct grammar -- and Government-speak, no less.

They don't scream "Even though English isn't our first language we have nothing to do with the Russian mafia!" like some others do.

And it at least says it comes from irs.gov, well, nonreply@irs.gov, rather than some bizarre obviously-fake address that screams "This is from Russia!"

So somebody might actually fall for this one. I guess a lot of people might, because they sure keep coming.

I'm going to go fax a procedural question to the number supplied: "Uh, which form should I return?" or something like that.

I'm guessing they won't reply. I've tried this before and got nothing back. I sure hope they do reply -- I'd love to get a discourse going with them.

In the meantime, please share some good ones you've received. They can be a hoot.

Хорошо!