This takes the cake, the pie, and the anchovy-stuffed plum custard.

Those several readers of this column-and you know who you are because I pay you to 'tweet' about it-are aware this space has recently been focused on email scammers trying to bilk me out of the money that would otherwise go to you, my loyal paid readership.

The crooks first pretended to be my long-lost best friends and then began simply stealing names of people who actually email me and impersonating them-in each case hoping for $900 to be able to leave a hotel in Rome, London, or Jerbjerbil because they had lost all of their cash, credit cards and personalized underwear.

Today, I received an email purporting to be from the Pentagon.

This is the literal content of the email:

“Hello!

I'm still waiting on your response to my message dated 04/10/2011; the essence of the message is to have you assist my organization with transferring funds, which we want to keep safely in your account and or any overseas account under your supervision.

I look forward to a reply of some kind.

Major-Gen. (name deleted)

Vice Director, Joint Staff, the Pentagon, Washington DC-USA”

Where to begin?

Yes, it is possible with all of the gridlock in Washington that the Pentagon is outsourcing its clandestine financing but how clandestine can you keep things if you involve a newspaper editor?

This could also be a private stimulus initiative from a Major-Gen. but I had only hoped for change. Not billions.

Let me use my opposable thumbs to good purpose:

First, I received no message from the Major-Gen. on April 10.

Secondly, if they want to keep funds safely somewhere there are lots better places than my account.

Thirdly, I can barely supervise my domestic account so I stay moonlight miles clear of supervising any overseas accounts, though I have made a purchase on Amazon.com from a bookseller in the small English village of Tetched-in-the-Wold near Wales.

Fourthly, what Major-Gen. looks forward to “a reply of some kind?”

Any real Major-Gen. accepts nothing less than the specific reply necessary. I have experience with only two generals but Lieutenant General Samuel V. Wilson and Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan have convinced me they don't sit around waiting for a “reply of some kind,” even from their pets. When they say 'fetch' the hound fetches.

Fifthly, he calls himself “Vice Director” and there he finally tells the truth. He is in charge of vice, no question there.

Fifthly part 2, why doesn't he spell out “general” instead of opting for Gen. I fear that Gen. is meant to make me believe he's a general when, in fact, he must be a Major-Gen., whatever that is.

Sixthly-or is it sixly?-he claims to be with the “Joint Staff,” thinking I will infer Joint Chiefs of Staff. No doubt he again slips sheepishly into the truth's clothing because Joint Staff spelled backwards is Ffats Tnioj, a notorious con artist out of Belgrade.

Seventhly, the subject line of the email reads “Hello!” Hello? You are asking for involvement in a deal worth billions involving the Pentagon-probably a sleezy nightclub in Yugoslavia (The Pentagon). Is that another secret code? Maybe I should drink my Ovaltine.

There is no way I believe that the actual Pentagon needs me to help them transfer funds.

How do I know this?

Because one of the people who reads this column helped the Major-Gen. transfer those funds last month.

And those funds can't need transferring again so soon.