How many times have you got an email from someone you don't know telling you they have a few million in prize money or inheritance that's all yours if you just pay the a small sum of money for administration fees or whatever?
There are many variations of the ruse, but they're all scams, and we usually just delete them and move on to the next thing in our inbox. After all, there's no point in replying to the emails, is there?
But what if a scammer hits you up on Facebook rather than email? If you've got the time to spare, maybe it would be fun to, you know, troll the troll.
That's what Tom Sheerin did when a random person sent him a message on Facebook. Tom had a couple of hours to spare, so he thought he'd waste a couple of hours of the scammer's time. Because why not? Click that link for the whole glorious exchange.
It starts off politely enough, but as soon as Tom asks if he knows the person, it's clear that this is someone up to no good.
Tom didn't fall for it - but he decided to play along. When Michael - if that is, indeed, his real name - sent him a picture of a bunch of cash just sitting in a box, he wanted to make sure the cash - all $1.2 million of it - wouldn't fall into the wrong hands.
"If I'm not at home will they leave it with a neighbour, I may be out as I do a lot of charity work with the local prostitutes but I wouldn't want to miss out on my prize, that money would replace a lot of missing teeth."
Now, they say you can't bullshit a bullshitter, but Michael is clearly the exception. He takes everything that Tom writes at face value - even the address of 69 Bell End that he's given. And when asked his age, Tom replies: "I'm 38 but I used to be 27," Michael just replies "Ok" and proceeds to talk about paying "The FedEx".
Tom mentions he knows a FedEx driver called Clarence, but that doesn't sit so well the scammer at all.
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Better, though, than when Tom, who'd been sworn to secrecy about his prize winnings, says that Johnny Vegas and Brookside character Jimmy Corkhill will be taking pictures with him for the local paper.
And there's this whole thing at the end with his (presumably fictional) son's drawing of a horse. Which, is actually kind of sweet in a weird, twisted and kind of tragic way.