One Of The Leaked Saudi Emails Is Literally Spam

The email, which you've probably deleted yourself, is asking for help getting access to $50 million of the late Muammar Qaddafi's money.

On Friday, Wikileaks released a new trove of documents from the Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry. (Earlier this month, the Saudis confirmed they'd been hacked, and a group called the "Yemen Cyber Army" claimed credit.)

Yves Logghe / AP

Part of that cache was an email purporting to be from Saif al-Qaddafi, the son of the late Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. And the younger Qaddafi needed help.

Uncredited / AP

"My late father has fifty million USD ($50,000,000.00) which me and his lawyers knows about .it is in South Africa and I seek your assistance to get the funds out for security reasons and investments," wrote Qaddafi.

He names his family's former lawyer in South Africa, Edward Jacob, as acting on behalf of the Gaddafi family to secure the funds.

In the letter, Gaddafi claims that he has been tortured by those holding him in Zintan.

"My ordeal started immediately after my father's death and subsequent take over government by the new administration. The present government is determined to portray all the good work of my father and have gone as far as confiscating all his assets. As I'm writing this letter to you, I'm in detention and under-going torture and questioning by the Libya government since 2012," he writes. " I have been held in communicado since the death of my father; hence I seek your indulgence to assist me in securing some funds. We are not allowed to see or discuss with anybody unless the government representatives."

Now, if that sounds familiar, it's for a good reason. It's spam. The same sort of spam that you probably have in your junk folder right now.

Elise Amendola / AP

Letters from members of Qaddafi's family — sometimes from his wife Safia, sometimes from his daughter Aisha — have been making the rounds for years now. While the amount Qaddafi squirreled away varies, the plea for help remains the same.

Pier Paolo Cito / AP

Aisha Qaddafi in 2011.

While there are definitely real emails in the document dump, the release of this email raises doubts on how well the information was vetted before it was placed online.

Universal Television

The full text of the email can be seen here, or on the Wikileaks site.