Junk Mail - Another Hoax

I recently got an email that included the following text:

If you delete  this ... you seriously don't have a heart. Hi, I am a 29  year old father. Me and my wife have had a wonderful life  together. God blessed us with a child too. Our daughter's  name is Rachel, and she is 10 years old.  Not long ago  the doctors detected brain cancer and in her little body. There is only  one way to save her...an operation. Sadly, we  don't have enough money to pay the price. AOL and ZDNET have agreed to help  us. The only way they can help us is this way, I send this email to  you and you send it to other people. AOL will track this email and  count how many people get it. Every person  who opens this email and sends it to at least 3 people will give us  32 cents. Please help us. Sincerely

The most recent two headers are shown below

<-----Original Message----->
From: Rozanne [ rozanne@elliesdbn.co.za]
Sent: 3/9/2007 6:59:54 AM
To: Chantel \(E-mail\); Elida \(E-mail\); Irene \(E-mail\); Jennett
\(E-mail\); Nicole \(E-mail\); Tam \(E-mail\); Theresa \(E-mail\);
Tracy Freeman \(E-mail\); Wendy \(E-mail\)
Subject: FW: Can you assist a family working for COIN security? This
email is not for the faint hearted - it was sent on 7th March so has
not been doing the rounds for years - very sad


-----Original Message-----
From: Rose Morrow [mailto: rose@elliesdbn.co.za]
Sent: 09 March 2007 08:27 AM
To: BILL (E-mail); CAMILLA (E-mail); Cathy Tilly (E-mail); FRANCI
(E-mail); JOANNE HUNTER (E-mail); JUSTIN STIRTON (E-mail); LEIGH &
DAVID (E-mail); MARION (E-mail); MORROW RACHEL (E-mail); SARAH
(E-mail); YVONNE & JOHN (E-mail); 'ALASTAIR CAMPBELL'; 'CATHY UK 2';
'Julie and Vernon'; 'ASINA'; 'CHANTEL'; 'JENNETT'; 'KENNY'; 'KESHREE';
'KUBEN'; 'MELANIE'; 'PRAVISHA'; 'REGINA'; 'ROZANNE'; 'SALLY'; 'VINO'
Subject: Can you assist a family working for COIN security? This email
is not for the faint hearted - it was sent on 7th March so has not
been doing the rounds for years - very sad
Importance: High

Lets see what we can find out about this in 10 minutes:

1. Search on Snopes.com  - a good starting posting when suspecting an urban legend.  A search for  doctors detect brain cancer Gives this response :  Search results
2. Search on google and I got this Hoax Warnings
   

Note this hoax dates from 7 years ago and not a few dates ago.

But the forgery is apparent anyway by looking at the email headers above.  Note both messages are from " elliesdbn.co.za" yet the sent
headers are formatted differently.  One in US date format and another in South African data format - someone has edited one of these.

Lets apply some common sense here

1. How is AOL and/or ZDNET going to count the number of times the email has been opened and forwarded to another person?
   
2. If these companies were moved to donate money wouldn't they just like pay the bill or give them a check.  Why would they embark on a crazy scheme of email forwarding while a child is in need of urgent surgery.
3. Lastly the attached image showed a picture of a child with various body deformities.  The actual picture is included on the Snopes.com site.  I am not a doctor but I can't believe these are the result of a brain tumour.
   

What is interesting is that this email has been doing the rounds now for at least 7 years.