I mean, who wouldn’t want to join the Illuminati? On top of joining the illustrious club of heavy hitters who run the world—like Beyoncé, Henry Kissinger, and the Queen—I would apparently be getting $100,000—in American dollars nonetheless!!! (Look, just getting paid in American dollars is a big deal for a Canadian.)

“Hello,” he initially wrote me before taking a brief pause. “Do you want to join Illuminati where we will be paying you the sum of $100,000 usd if yes get back to us now for more information.”

The first message the Twitter user named Johnson Larry sent to me was pretty innocuous—the second one, not so much.

Mr. Larry gave me a number to add on WhatsApp, which I quickly searched—turns out the Illuminati has some pretty shitty infosec—and was able to find that the number was from Nigeria. This raised a few red flags that Mr. Larry might not be on the up and up.

As our chat went on, I learned that Mr. Larry was the “Grand Master,” that it was his job to recruit people into the Illuminati, and that he had been in the group for 19 years or so. However, he wanted to take this conversation to WhatsApp—the official app of the secretive underworld.

As we all know, internet scams originating from Nigeria are, like, a little thing. The most well known one—the Nigerian Prince scam (also known as the advance-fee scam)—has pretty been around since the start of the Internet and never seems to die. The scam works like this, the mark gets an email from someone purporting to represent a wealthy figure or group—like a prince or the Illuminati—and that they can offer the mark a substantial sum of money if they offer something up front.

The reason for giving the money up front and the riches being offered can and do vary wildly—from blood diamonds from a prince who has been held up by a coup d'etat, to gold bullion from a wealthy traveller who died in a plane crash overseas. Millions upon million of dollars are lost yearly due to these scams—typically from saps like me and Mid-West Grandpas.