Letter From Lagos

Got a bit of e-mail the other day from someone claiming to have an office in the UK. A Nigerian e-mail scam! (Which could be from anywhere, really.) How quaint. Haven't gotten one of those in years. I thought those were old hat by now -- who hasn't heard of them?

The text is long-winded and semiliterate, including the following (all sic): "Your unclaimed money from the British authority, you have already started the legal processing of the claim, But we discover that the above law firm and other individual only collecting your money to divert the payment to there self some time ago. We also discover that was why you have not received your payment, because we are not sure to release this payment to them,because the affidavit of claim state your name,and the account information present to us to transfer the money to,was not in your name, that was why i was directed to contact you..."

I guess this classic con is still a game of high volume, low response. Even if you get only one pigeon from the thousands of e-mails you sent without much effort or expense, that's still a profitably crooked day's work.