In less than a fortnight I turned down £2 million

Robert Tilley

These scams have been around for about 20 years, and got so serious in Germany in the 1980s that the German equivalent of the CID, in Wiesbaden, established a special branch to tackle the problem. The most spectacular case involved the widow of a wealthy haulage contractor, who wept as she told her story on German TV. A few weeks after her husband's death, she received a letter from a "lawyer" in Nigeria informing her that her husband had invested a lot of money in Nigerian government bonds. Did she know about that. No, she hadn't. Right, said the lawyer, she would get a first-class return air ticket to Lagos, where she would be required to complete all the necessary paper work and the money would be transferred to her bank account. Out to Lagos she flew, was picked up at the airport, driven to a smart office in town, given masses of papers to sign and told that, to cpmpensate for all her trouble, she would be the lawyer's guest at a Nigerian seaside resort for one week. The poor woman couldn't believe her good fortune and flew back to German the following week in high spirits. During her week at the seaside, her bank account and her company's had been cleaned out, ownership of the company had been transferred to a Nigerian consortium and she was bankrupt. Amazingly, these scams are continuing--I have a file containing several dozen. The organizers tap into every new crisis--I've just had an offer from a Zimbabwe farmer to provide a safe haven for several million dollars he had buried on his homestead.

Al_Frick

The Onion's World Factbook (Guide to Our Dumb World) satirizes Nigeria for its massive amounts of fraud and scam artists. Most of the worthless e-mails floating around cyberspace originate here. The one solution to all this would be to charge 5 cents for every e-mail sent, thus creating a huge disincentive for these fraudsters to flood the world with their garbage. There was an article in The Atlantic Monthly about a Minister who fell prey to these Nigerian scams and proceeded (over the course of 3 years) to send them over $100,000. You would think that after a certain point you'd begin to get suspicious.

RHK

I'm fully familiar with these scams of course, as we all are. But how exactly do they clean out a bank account and transfer a company? What is the mechanism they use?

Aleksandar Ardalic

If you sign papers which authorise the scammer to open and close and withdraw funds from your bank account and or sign papers transnferring directorship or chareholding in a company then end up transferring total control over the finances of your personal and your company's funds and bank accounts - It really is that simple - Retired Lawyer

Gerard Noteboom

I have been exposed to this scam, usually from Nigeria, for decades. I follow the rule " if it is too good to believe, don't". I never lost a penny.

John Bishop

I am glad Mr Forbes did not succumb. I used to get similar news of 'good fortune'. One of my clever saons advised, 'Dad if they want you to send money then just tell them to deduct the amount and send your "winnings" on to you.' That I did and guess what? The "good news" stopped!

Dodgy Geezer

I ssume you have found out by now that replying to this sort of e-mail is almost as bad as falling for the original scam. Your e-mail will now be passed round all the other scammers, and finally sold to the spam merchants. You should really have warned people NOT to reply or give ANY indication that there is a person behind any of the random addresses they post to. On a lighter note, see http://www.scamorama.com/ for one way of fighting back...

Alan

I have a very rare surname, but according to all these scam e-mails I have people with the same surname dying all over Africa on almost a weekly basis. They all die with all of their family members in tragic conditions and leave a small fortune behind. As I have the same surname I am invited to share the sum left behind with a crooked lawyer, or the like and only have 10 days in which to do so. If all these tales had been true I would have been a billionaire by now. The only time I have replied I did volunteer to open a brand new bank account at a bank I had never used before and to leave it with a balance of zero. I said if that was acceptable to them they could deposit the money there. I did not get a reply to this offer.

Stanley Morgan

Thank you, Bryan. Fearing a Mephistophelean theft of my soul (rather more valuable than my bank balance), I have always zapped these enticements at birth. And yet have always wondered about subsequent steps. Thanks so much for your brave investigation.

David McGregor

How on earth is this news? Doesn't everyone know about these scams? They've been around for decades! They used to use faxes before email. Who is this sheltered ingenu Bryan Forbes?

RS

419eater.com is a site that turns the tables on these scammers - it is quite an amusing read.