Paper short abstract:

Everyone gets mails with offers of billions of $$, €€, ££ that have become free because someone had to flee some civil war in Africa, or because of some other reason. This paper analyzes several such mails to see if the fairy-tale type of riches is offered using various tools of the real fairy tale.

Paper long abstract:

I am sure you receive it too, in your email inbox: offers of billions of $$, €€, ££ that have become free because someone had to flee some civil war in Africa, or heirs have been lost in migration, or even that someone made money by corrupt means and now wants to relieve his/her soul by giving it to you. I get these too, and for years I have felt amused with the way such senders depict their personal situation with clear references to micro- and macro-historical events. Years ago I opened them because of ignorance, then started recognising and deleting them, and now they are opened by mistake, due to the sender's clever subject title in the inbox.

The Call for Papers of the Panel "'Shaping Virtual Lives: Identities on the Internet'" has inspired me to express my thoughts by studying every such mail I will receive from now, July 2010, to April 2011. It is a foregone conclusion that such mails are fake messages, spam and junk. I do not propose to find out who creates them. I am interested in their art of storytelling: in the way fictional biographies are narrated, historical events are utilized and social contexts are reflected in these mails. The fairy-tale type of riches is offered using various tools of the genuine fairy tale.