The storyline wasn't new - old man befuddled by scam letter saying he had won a million dollars, these letters come around every day - but the unravelling of his dream was masterful.
But yes, these scams come around all the time, usually from somewhere in Africa.
My most recent one, however, came from London, and perhaps this is why I actually read it.
A man called Kerr David, whose email was quixotically DavidKer, one R, Head Auditor of the Credit Finance Group in London, had arresting news.
Kerr David, it seems, was indeed a cur, for he had discovered in the course of his work, that there was an unclaimed fund of over $15 million due to somebody called Colbert, not me, after a man called Colbert had died with neither heir nor will, and this fat bag of cash had been floating free like a cork in the ocean for 12 years.
Kerr David had spent all this time tracking Colberts all over the world to find someone to free up the funds.
It seemed the money not only had not been claimed but would never be claimed, hence a slender ethical base had formed for him to lay his fat fingers on the dosh providing someone called Colbert, me, could claim it.
He would take a fee for letting me gobble this money, naturally, and while I felt his commission, $11 million, was quite high, I nevertheless responded eagerly, because I knew in my heart I could find much to buy with over four million ethically-acceptably-obtained dollars.
''Dear Kerr David,'' I wrote.
''Thank you for your letter of March 7. I must admit I had to read it twice because it seemed too good to be true! But everything seems to be in order and I am sure with your position in the finance industry, you are totally in control of what you are doing. I can only say thank you for taking the trouble to track me down to free up this money.''
At this point I felt I was moving stealthily and without suspicion, even though a sixth, and indeed seventh, sense suggested to me there might be something dodgy going on.
So I left the solid trunk of the rational behaviour tree behind, and edged out on to the edge of one of its furtherest branches.
''This news could not have come at a better time for me,'' I continued enthusiastically.
''Both my natural mother, whom I have finally been able to trace after years of blank walls and heartbreak, and my stepmother, are in need of expensive - if done privately - and urgent surgery, and while I am comfortably off, these surgeries, which I DO wish to have done quickly, and in this country, private is the only way this can happen, would make a deep hole in my fiscal reserves. So your news could not have come at a better time!''
I thought the two mothers touch was a brilliant one, as if he was intending to defraud me in any way, and Heavens to Betsy, so many people do this in the modern world, he would surely send me the cash with no monkey business if he knew both my mothers needed urgent surgery.
To any man worth his salt, a mother is sacrosanct.
I also felt if he read that last paragraph carefully, he would note one sentence went for 70 words with 14 subordinate clauses, and ''your news could not have come at a better time'' was written twice, both suggesting I could not possibly be an experienced literate journalist, least of all one taking the mickey in a weekly newspaper column.
I concluded by saying I looked forward to the next steps.
Well, you can fell me with a toothpick, but the man has not replied in five days - $11 million sitting on a plate, and he chooses silence?
He must be poorly.
I will give him three days to recover and write again.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
