Highly intelligent and sneaky spam artist

Got six "PayPal" emails all in a row in the spam folder that I just couldn't pass up:

RE:You just sent a payment to Teddy Peterson
FW:You just sent a payment to Allan Peterson
RE:You just sent a payment to Ulysses Peterson
RE:You just sent a payment to Harrison Peterson
RE:You just sent a payment to Darrell Peterson
RE:You just sent a payment to Robin Peterson

All for $80 to $140. The amount due and the amount paid were both randomly different.
All the sending email addresses were of the form "wcFIRST_NAME22@hotmail.com"
All show the same shipping address.
All refer to "Thad Peterson".


The links all go to a non-functional URL. So - what was the point?

If you want to get someone to click on your spam email's links, perhaps you ought to write the robot script so it sends only ONE email to each recipient - and perhaps you could make it look like the charge actually was paid by the person receiving the email.

If you are smart enough to write the script that generates this, how much extra work would it be to make it less obviously a scam?

Duh.

I wonder if PayPal bothers to attempt prosecution of these idiots if they are ever caught. It would be a slam-dunk copyright infringement, not to mention interstate fraud.

Update:

This morning I got two more:

FW:You just sent a payment to Deirdre Peterson - paid $60 toward the $100 billed.
FW:You just sent a payment to Shawn Peterson - paid $100 toward the $120 billed.

What's the point, if the links don't turn up someone's Viagra store or try to phish for your data?