This is one such email proposal that I once received and my response.

“The Proposal”
Dear Ronnie Lewis, (Lewis Contractors)
My Name is Andrew Dunlop and I work for a company based here in Canada. I have a business proposal which will benefit both of us. I will give you a brief overview on the proposal. I request that you act as an intermediary agent/supplier to my company. In so doing, this will yield high dividends for both of us. However, I need your co-operation to make this business opportunity a success. My company forbids me from profiting in any purchases made by our company. (Conflict of interest). .

I will secure a supply contract deal for you as our supplier of doped SOI (Silicon-on-Insulator – This is special because it’s doped with a rear liquid metal mixture treated in a certain unique way) This product is currently being sold by a company in China at a cost of $4,900 per carton (each carton contains 50 pieces) and can be sold to my company at a cost of $12,500 per carton. I have enormous influence over our new purchasing manager therefore getting her to sign and pay for the product at your fixed price is not a problem. The demand for the product is very high. Basically what you are doing is to purchase this product from china at a relatively low price and sell it to my company at a marked up price and the profit margin will be shared between us.

Please get back to me with your phone number so i can call you to provide more details.

Note: It is you that will determine the place where the transaction will be done and my company shall go there for the purchasing of the product from you.
Best regards,
Andrew Dunlop

To: Andrew Dunlop adunlop@devout.com
Subject: Re: New message

“My Response”
Andrew,
I’m not sure that this is something I can get involved with, but I invite more conversation about your propostion.

Is this a one time thing or would it be an ongoing enterprise?

Is there anyway we could get into trouble doing this? Like serve jail time?

I once had a person contact me with a proposal over the Internet involving helping him transfer monies from a foreign country through the US. The end result of that fiasco was I served 52 months in the federal pen for money laundering. After sitting there all those many days thinking about what my life had turned out to be I decided upon my release to track my business partner down and make sure he never did anything like that again.
After many miles and months of tracking him down I finally found him.

I can still hear his yells and squeals as I dismembered his body piece by piece with a very large knife and the help of a chainsaw. Even though I don’t normally eat organ meat I felt compelled to boil his liver and his heart in a pot of the blood I drained from his lifeless body. I feasted on same over the next 2 days.
Let me apologize for going on and on with my ramblings but it is still fresh on my mind.

Now back to our business deal. Where can we meet to see if this deal is worth pursuing. I am trying to get my life re-started and this may just be the right thing to do just that.

Please keep our conversation in confidence, as I really don’t need to be hassled about the disappearance of that very unfortunate individual.

Best regards and look forward to meeting you.

I never did hear back from Andrew. I guess he got cold feet.