Not so good on the details

Pretty much everybody by now has heard of---or has been solicited by---the Nigerian e-mail scam, which according to some reports is perhaps the third- or fourth-leading industry in the economy.

What is rather astonishing, though, is how far-fetched the plots seem to be: judging by the e-mails I've received, there are three main routes in the scam. One is the "dead dictator": some assassinated leader squirreled away some money, and a foreigner is needed to whisk it into the country. Another is the "fraudulent overbill": a committee has submitted a "claim" to the government that is substantially higher than the actual "bid," and a foreign investor is needed to claim the remainder of the money as a "contractor." Finally is the "foreign worker": a dead foreign national has left a truckload of cash in an account in Nigeria; a foreign next-of-kin is required to claim the money.

Personally, I think the last of these is the most preposterous---particularly when the worker in question is in a random occupation, such a sailor or an engineer. First off, what engineer or sailor---or other typical white- or blue-collar worker---would have $10+ million stashed away. More importantly, if you had that kind of capital, and you were a foreign worker, why wouldn't you invest it somewhere else, such as Switzerland?

I know sometimes that people are deceived even though it's clearly a case of "too good to be true." However, when you start looking and noticing that people are sending this spam to e-mail lists and requesting that this stay "confidential and top-secret," you realize how utterly absurd it is to think that you're going to reap anything other than sorrow and a smaller bank balance if you fall for this scam.