[Air-l] name game

[Barry Wellman]

Dear AOIR folks,
I need advice.

Someone e-mailed me claiming to have just found that he too
is named Barry Wellman and is Jewish, having been adopted into a Raleigh
NC Christian family at a young age. He's anxious to make contact with us
Wellman's (of whom I am the last of my particular lineage).

He gave me a strange sounding AOL return address.

I checked on his name and there is someone at that address at Raleigh. In
what Mapquest suggests is a residential neighborhood (lots of suburban
crescents).

A web search reveals nobody by that name in Raleigh.

Is this a well-known scam or spam-finder.

I do have a phone number to call -- thru a Yahoo finder service -- but if
someone is playing a hoax on the person whose phone number it is, I don't
want to deluge him. (What is the call-display blocking command, btw?)

Meanwhile, I get at least one offer a day to help someone high up in
Nigeria, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone, or Zimbabwe to do a scam and at the
same time make me rich. Today, it was Laurent Kabila's second wife. I am
thinking of throwing a cyber-party and inviting all these generous
people;-)

And so it goes.
 Barry
 ___________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman        Professor of Sociology       NetLab Director
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca   http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman

  Centre for Urban & Community Studies        University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue   Toronto Canada M5S 2G8   fax:+1-416-978-7162
 ___________________________________________________________________