UKC

I had an email this morning from the chap who was our Sirdar on the Annapurna Circuit two years ago. It reads:

Namaste,
How are you and how is your life running? I hope everything and everyone is being good with you.
I'm fine to here but coming soon my youngest daughter have surgery to her stomach or belly. We checkup already 4/5 hospital in Ktm. she had problem from since 2009.but finally this time doctor found what is her disease. Also doctor advice to us she need to as soon as possible surgery for her. If she take longer ,she will 90%chances to get cancer. So we decide to for her need to as soon as possible doctor surgery.
So pls kindly help to from you,for her pray or wish to her surgery will come success. We want to see,she will have long life.
I hope you wish to my daughter life. If you have any idea or advise to me ,plz send me any suggest or comment,I will respect to your advice. Thank you.
From
Your sincerely

Although we initially exchanged emails for about four months after the trip this is the first I've heard from him since. Naturally I do feel concerned for his daughter, having been through a serious illness myself earlier this year. What does seem a little disconcerting to me is that he has attached to the email a copy of the report of the girls CT scan and I wonder if he is, in a subtle way, seeking financial assistance.

How would you respond? My initial thought is to reply saying how sorry I am to hear about his daughter, explain briefly about my illness and treatment and advise him and his family to remain positive. The email is also copied to about five other recipients.

How would you deal with it?

In reply to mypyrex: I don't think thaere is too much going on here that is subtle. If you want to offer him money (how would you ensure the money got to him anyways?) then why not send him some. Every little helps, or so I'm told.

Certainly your advice will be very relevant and welcome.

Presumably you went with a company like Jagged Globe or whoever. Haven't these companies got some highly publicised commitment to helping out their own?

In reply to Frank the Husky:

What I thought
I assume they have.

Just seems strange to me that he felt it necessary to send a copy of the radiology report.

In reply to mypyrex:

Did he use your actual name, or include details about you or your time together, and was it sent only to you or lots of people? If his e-mail account has been hijacked it could be the start of an attempt to scam you.

In reply to EddInaBox:

The list of recipients included my name. Other than that the content is as above. I think I will respond as I mentioned and if there is any response to suggest that it's a scan then I'll put a block on it.

In reply to mypyrex:

"So pls kindly help to from you,for her pray or wish to her surgery will come success"

Okay friend, I'm praying _really_ hard twice a day.

All the best,
your old mate.

Interestingly I've just right clicked on the email to bring up "properties".

The chaps name is Purna but the return address is shown as "Puran_(second name)@++++++.com

In reply to mypyrex:

Assuming the .com isn't a standard mail site (googlemail, gmail, hotmail, fastmail, etc) go to it and see what's on the site. If it's a generic site unrelated to him and the guidework he does perhaps you should be wary.

If it bothers you going to the site link it here and I'll take a look.

Might also want to check his previous emails that you have, does the text look the same? Like many who speak english as a second language he uses a decent amount of punctuation without spaces before he starts typing again like,this, is that shown in his previous emails? Most scams don't put that much effort into reproducing text the way the owner of the account does.

In reply to Removed User:


It's yahoo.
I think I'll just send him best wishes and leave it at that. I certainly never intended to send money.

In reply to mypyrex:

Not sure why you'd even question it then. An email to you from someone you know including a radiology report from a known mail website. There isn't people trying to scam you around every corner you know

In reply to Removed User:



>There isn't people trying to scam you around every corner you know

Thats not what my spam filter tells me!

In reply to mypyrex:

Perhaps he can't get the treatment there and hopes you may be able to help get it done in Britain? Obviously this is a long shot but desperate fathers may try such things. You say it was sent to several people maybe he hoped one of his ex-clients may know a way of helping.

As for what to do (apart from saying there's little chance of any one on ukc know better than you yourself! It seems you did like him and just tried a long shot) why not simply reply as you would to anyone else and explain that you can't pull any strings in Britain, alas, but ask him what exactly he is thinking of in terms of help?