I received the following message today.

"I NEED YOUR HELP!!!
I'm writing this with tears in my eyes,I came down here to London,United Kingdom for a short vacation unfortunately I got mugged at the park of the hotel where I stayed,all cash,credit card and cell were stolen off but luckily for Me is that We still have my Life and passports with me.

I've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and my flight leaves in less than 3hrs from now but am having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let me leave until I settle the bills,We are freaked out at the moment. Please help me out of this mess now!!!

Tamas."

While it's obviously spam (it's a generic sob story with no details whatsoever, I received it on two separate e-mail addresses, from someone I don't even know personally, with no invocation, and also, no field to show whom he sent it to /i.e. he probably sent it to a huge number of addresses and masked the "To" field/) coming probably from the hacked account of an MSN contact of mine (but he's only a contact because I thought he was someone else when I accepted his invitation, so I don't know him personally), it contains no links to click, no account number to send money to, and generally, nothing to trap the average idiot reading spam e-mails.
What could be the point of this? Just an attack on the mail servers? Or could there be more to it?

Nothing embedded in the code?

No, I couldn't find anything.

You are supposed to reply and say that you are willing to help. The spammer will then tell you how (probably by transferring some money to its account, with the promise that you will get it back as soon as possible).

+1 to what AFnord said. It might be the "Nigerian prince" kind of spam. Writing that it's urgent, though, somehow kills the idea of you writing back asking what to do. Still, this seems the only viable explanation to me so far.

That makes sense, it could very well be that. Thanks.

similar thing

http://www.moneywise.co.uk/scams-rip-offs/scams/scam-the-week-watch-out-the-sad-news-scam

Slightly OT: how do you find out whether there's malware embedded in the code? I sometimes just get completely weird 1-2 word emails, and I don't know if they're infected.

Anyone who actually needs to turn to random internet dwellers to help them if they get mugged abroad doesn't actually deserve any sympathy or help.

This, read in a 'matter of factly' voice in my head made me laugh, I'm a bad person :(

Generally it's pretty damn hard to infect someone through text. That's why most spammers put down a website link to do that. I'm not saying it's impossible. But anyone who can shove a virus into a program that can still infect anyone who uses it, specifically an email system or an instant messenger would have all the money in the world right now. Literally. All of it.

Maybe it's time for some scam baiting.

http://www.419eater.com/html/letters.htm

Sadly there are so many scam baiters out there that it is becoming harder and hard to mess with the scammers :( I've tried doing that to a few (I have a separate email account for those things, never scam bait from your regular mail account, create one with a false name), and most just stop replying once they think that you are stalling them.