How to write a good, fake email

This week a man called God­win Grech admit­ted to writ­ing a fake email that attempted to make Prime Min­is­ter Kevin Rudd look like he was giv­ing his mates spe­cial treatment.

Obvi­ously God­win Grech (that’s him above, after the wind changed) is not very good at writ­ing fake emails. So today I present my guide to writ­ing a good, fake email.

Start the email in a friendly man­ner so as to make the reader feel com­fort­able right from the begin­ning. A casual greet­ing such as Waddup witchoo? is a good start. For the moth­ers read­ing this it trans­lates to What is up with you? And for the grand­moth­ers read­ing it trans­lates to How are you, my dear?

Next we need to decide how exactly this email will be a ‘fake’. Some peo­ple like to try to trick peo­ple into send­ing them money. Some peo­ple like to try to make the Prime Min­is­ter look dodgy. But I like to send emails that are the equiv­a­lent to mak­ing prank calls. For exam­ple, I might pre­tend like I’m giv­ing away free Hip­pies, which are a cross between a hip­pos and pup­pies. They’re very cute.

So I would write I am giv­ing away free Hip­pies. Click here if you want some. But instead of link­ing through to the free Hip­pies (which don’t exist any­way) I would link through to some­thing gross. Like a pic­ture of Bear poop.

Then sign off the email as pro­fes­sion­ally as you can so as to not raise sus­pi­cions. Some­thing like See you on the flippity-flip-flip side, From Andrew. Also put some­thing in the sub­ject line of the email that makes it look like a real email. Some­thing like Pick Up a Free Hip­pie. Now let’s see how it reads.

Date: 6/08/2009
From: Andrew McDon­ald
To: Some­one else
Sub­ject: Pick Up a Free Hip­pie

Waddup witchoo?

I am giv­ing away free Hip­pies. Click here if you want some.

See you on the flippity-flip-flip side,

From Andrew

Take note God­win Grech. This is how you write a proper, fake email.