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Ask the Patriarch 269
I'm Ukranian — Just give me some money

from: Sasha (M*******13@yandex.ru)

Unsurprisingly, having a web contact form guarantees a flood of spam, mostly bot generated for uggs, drugs, and porn. I control it by regularly changing the address of the contact form, leaving the old one for the bots to send their junk to a null address. But still, there are individuals out there painstakingly filling in web forms in the hope that a church will give them money. There must be at least a few churches out there who are suckers for this sort of thing, making it worth the scammers' time.

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Subject: Help Me. My mane is Sasha. I live in Ukraine.

Good day!

My name is Alex, I live in Ukraine!

I saw you on the Internet. I need financial assistance.

I am a private person, but I have financial difficulty that an honest way to solve difficult.

I'm an honest man. Work, but getting 2000 UAH. It is not enough that would save the money and solve problems. 70 percent is spent on rent and food and travel.

I know it's hard ... but help me, I'll wait. I opened intrenet purse Yandex money: № 410012185129140.

The Patriarch replies:

Thank you for writing Sasha... or Alex... or whatever your name (or mane) is. (Or if you let Google Translate change your name in one place, make sure it does it throughout.)

I'm quite surprised given the current situation in your country to see a Ukrainian resident still using Russian internet resources, especially to beg for money from a Westerner. It raises red flags. Not that the stupidity of your request is not a large red flag in itself.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that you could get money from me, but the ONLY way I give out cash through this website is described here — Ask the Patriarch 8: Please send money to conduct my ministry.

Once you fully meet the requirements, you may submit a formal request for as many start-up grants as you have qualified for. (Strangely, after 12 years, nobody has yet applied for a grant — you could be the very first!)

By the way, most people I know would be extremely happy to have 30% of their income left over after meeting basic expenses. They would not be grovelling to people who popped up in a web search on "church".

Yours

JT

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