Inquiries to Acquire IPs

[Crist.Clark at globalstar.com (Crist Clark)]

We got a strange and out of the blue inquiry from someone
wishing to pay us for a chunk of our ARIN allocation,

> Hello,
>
> According to Whois data, you company owns the following
> IP address space:
>
> 206.220.220.0/24
>
> We would like to get this block of IP addresses for our business
> needs. Is it possible to assign this block for our company with 
> PI (Provider Independent) or PA (Provider Assigned) status?
>
> We ready to pay about $5,000 for the net block itself
> and all related procedures.
>
> Would you be interested in such an offer? The amount of compensation 
> is subject to negotiation.

We're not interested, mostly because we use our allocation,
but also because I think this is not allowed by our agreement
with ARIN. Seems a bit fishy.

I should add the sender identified himself and his company
clearly. It wasn't from some free mail account. (Although it
could of course be spoofed.)

Is this a new thing? IP speculation as we come upon free pool
depletion? A front for spammers?