How Much Are Internet Kidneys Going For These Days?

Test Ticker

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. The truth is, we're a long way from our $600,000 goal, and we have to get as close as we can by Tuesday so we don't have to make hard decisions come January. If you value our reporting, please consider pitching in today.

$600,000

We still need to raise 400,000: Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all matters.

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. We need to raise $600,000, or get as close as we can, by Tuesday so we don't need to make hard decisions come January. Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all makes a difference.

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.

From my inbox this morning, here is the entire message:

Please I want to sell one of my kidney o+

I don’t think I need a kidney at the moment, but maybe later. And anyway, I need one in A-negative. If you’re going to spam me with this stuff, the least you can do is have the decency to hack into my medical records and offer me one of the right blood type. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

So is this the latest internet scam? Or has it been going on for a while and I only found out about it today? How does it work? Maybe if I reply, I’ll then get a long sob story about why this poor guy needs to sell his kidney and I’ll be so heartbroken I’ll PayPal him $10,000 to put his life back together. That’s the best I can figure out. Anyone have a better idea?