These TV Ads for the Azerbaijani Bank that Helps Fund the World's Spam Look A Lot Like Spam

If your bank is one of the few in the world that would process the transactions of the email spam underworld, you might not want to draw attention to yourself with advertisements that look like the brainchildren of Donald Trump and Uday Hussein. Nothing says shady opulence like a I’m-on-a-boat melange of models, diamonds, Apache helicopters and nuclear submarines. Then again, if your bank is in Azerbaijan, maybe no one will bat an eye.

In addition to AG-Bank (motto roughly translated: “to be rich”), there are two other banks suspected of handling the transactions of the world’s spammers, according to new research by labs at the University of California, San Diego and Berkeley: the Latvian branch of DnB Nord and St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank Ltd. In total, researchers say these three banks are responsible for 95% of the credit card transactions perpetrated by spam. That explains these videos, more or less exactly what a spam-inspired music video would look like. And while it’s not clear which bank is the most prolific indirect spam-funder, the clear winner in the spam-funded garishness award goes to AG.

Better throw all these diamonds off our yacht before we take on too much water and can’t be saved by the incoming Apache helicopters.

I’ll admit, I don’t know what this dude is saying, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s probably something like "AG-Bank: Yachts. Women. Submarines. Women. Apache helicopters. Dolphin. Ladies.