My email address is plauged with spam, I get a few hundred spams every day. I use spambayes to filter out most of it, and it goes into a spam folder on my computer. At least every few days, I get a "Nigeriam email scam". These are written to look like a personal email from some banking official in Africa somewhere. They always say that someone has died, leaving a huge sum of money. For some reason, they need you to help retrieve the money, and you get a part of it.

Being a knowledgable computer user, I don't take these seriously, and I read them just for laughs. However, there are a lot of naive people online. Apparently, these scams rank as the 3rd or 4th top money maker in Nigeria's econonmy, with over 100 million stolen each year. As a public service, I will post one such message I found in my inbox recently. If you search Google for some of the terms in this message, you can find other copies of it.

Here it is:

FROM:MR.CHRISTOPHER GEZI
Business Phone: 27 83 416-1704
PLEASE REPLY DIRECTLY PERSONAL EMAIL
mrgezi2002@hotmail.com

HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

I know that this message will come to you as a surprise since we dont know each other before but for purpose of intruduction,I am MR.CHRISTOPHER GEZI. An
Auditor in AMALGERMATED BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA (ABSA).

There is an account opened in this Bank in 1980 and since 1990 nobody has operated on this account again. After going through some old files in the records, I discorvered that if I do not remit this money out urgently it would be forfieted for nothing. The owner of this account is MR SMITH B. ANDREAS, a foreigner, and a miner at Kruger Gold Co.,A Geologist by profession and he died since 1990.

No other person know about this account or anything concerning it, the account has no other beneficiary and my investigation proved To me as well that his
company does not know anything about his account and the amount involved is (US$ 18.5)Eighteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars. I am only contacting you as a foreigner because this money cannot be approved to a local Bank here, but can only be approved to any foreign account because the money is in US Dollars and the former owner of the account is Mr.Smith B. Andreas is a foreigner too.

I know that this message will come to you as a surprise as we do not know ourselves before.we will sign angreement but be sure that it is real and a
geniune business.Please reply urgently so that I will inform you the next step to take immediately.Send also your private phone and fax number including the
full details of the account to be used for the deposit.

I want us to meet in person or sign a binding agreement to bind us together so that you can receive this money into a foreign account or any account of
your choice where the fund will be safe.And I will fly to your country for withdrawal and sharing and other investments.
I am contacting you because of the need to involve a foreigner with foreign account and foreign beneficiary.

I need your full co-operation to make this work fine because the management is ready to approve this payment to any foreigner, who had correct information
of this account which I will give to you later if you are able and willing to handle such amount in strict confidence and trust according to my instructions and advice for a mutual benefit because this opportunity will never come again in my life.

I need truthful person in this business because I dont want to make mistake,I need your strong assurance and trust.with my position now in the office I can
transfer this money to any foreigners reliable account, which you can provide with assurance that this money will be intact pending my physical arrival
in your country for sharing.I will destroy all documents of transaction immediately we receive this money leaving no trace to any place.

You can also come to discuss with in person after which I will make this remittance in your presence and two of us will fly to your country at least two days ahead of the money going into the account.I will apply for annual leave to get VISA immediately I hear from you that you are ready to act and receive this fund in your account with appropriate clearance forms of the ministries and foreign exchange departments.

At the conclucion of this business, you will be given 25% of the total amount ,70% will be for me,and while 5% will be for expenses both parties might have incurred during the process of the transferring.I look forward to your earliest reply and PLEASE REPLY DIRECTLY PERSONAL EMAIL:mrgezi2002@hotmail.com

Yours truly,

MR.CHRISTOPHER GEZI.

I got an email from Feedblitz saying that they are adding some new features to the free accounts. I have customized the appearance of the email with some graphics I had laying around. I'll try to make a more extensive email template later.