[Grey Wolf]

I received my first one of these. Surprisingly well written, actually:

You may be surprised to receive this letter from me since you don't know me personally. I am Mr Kelvin Makosana, the first son of Late Joseph Makosana, who was murdered in a land dispute in Zimbabwe. I got your contact through an Internet trade directory here in Italy and I decided to contact you. I do not know your person but I relied on faith to see me through.
Black war veterans claiming to be farmers, invaded my father's house On April 16, 2000 at about 6.32am in Macheke/Virginia district and murdered my father because of his insistence that white farmers be allowed to retain their farm lands despite the recently introduced land reforms  "Act" in Zimbabwe by the head of state, Sir Robert Mugabe. Until his death he was the vice president of the Zimbabwean Farmers' Union (ZFU). It took us so long to contact you because we had to wait for the appropriate time to do so. (The reason I will explain to you in details later on).
 Before his untimely death, he had deposited the sum of Nineteen Million, Five Hundred Thousand Dollars (US$ 19,500,000.00) this money was deposited in a box as family valuables for security concerns from my family and me.
This fund was meant for the purchase of new machinery and agro-allied chemicals for the new farms acquired in Swaziland.
 This land problem came when our President, Sir Robert Mugabe introduced a new land act "Modus Operandi" reform which wholly affected the rich white farmers. A lot of people were killed because of these land reforms "Act" of which my late father was one of the main targets. My father was solely targeted because of his support for the white farmers.
 Based on this, my family had to spread out; I am now in the Republic of Ireland with my brother as refugees while my mother and my younger sisters are
Living in South Africa as refugees as well. We decided to contact you to assist us in transferring this money to your account in your country or any part of the world for investment as the monetary/investment laws of South Africa and
Republic of Ireland prohibits refugees from running bank accounts or is involved in any transaction/investment. Based on this, we contacted you hoping that you will assist us with this transaction in the name of God.
As the only educated daughter, I am saddled with the responsibility Of seeking a genuine and an honest person who will assist us in Transferring this money out of South Africa without the knowledge of my country (Zimbabwe) government who are bent on taking everything my late father had after confiscating all his farmlands and investments in Zimbabwe and Swaziland. We are absolutely left with nothing except the money I talked about previously.
 For your kind assistance, my mother and I are offering you 20% of the Funds after the successful transfer of the funds to your account .5% will be set aside for any expenses that might result in the process of this transaction, while 75% will be for my family which will be used for investment in your country under your direction as we do not know anything about investments.
 Please contact me through my private e-mail address {address removed}, while I implore you to maintain Absolute confidentiality required in this transaction. If not, then I humbly apologize for this infringement on your privacy.

Yours truly,
Mr Kelvin Makosana
{address removed}

Of course, the writer fails to maintain a single gender throughout the letter, but that's the main flaw I see.

[Bobboau]

you should mail him back giveing him pointers, like the son/daughter thing.

[Swamp_Thing]

I once got one of those, and actually replied. I told him i needed money to start doing that stuff, and he should mail ME  1000 dollars. I never got a reply back.
 

[Falcon]

[WMCoolmon]

"Pardon me my friend, but I am Nijerian roialty. Please ignore the fact that I can't spell 'Nigerian'. Or 'royalty'."
"Do you want to refinance your home? We have the lowest loans of anywhere on the internet!"
"Do you want a bigger penis? Where do you want it? I can suggest some places!"

Ad-libbing, yes. I think that RvB movie is my favorite one. I've always thought of drafting a letter like this:

To: Shelly
Subject: Re: I'm home alone tonight, looking for a man

Dear Shelly,
   I regret to inform you that, due to travel costs, I am unable to fly to your house to fulfill your need for a man. I realize that your husband fails to please you and is constantly working, so I have looked through my e-mail to find a few e-mails which might interest you.
   First, I have an e-mail from a reputable pharmacy (according to the e-mail I received from them) offering "all-natural herbal super viagra". This may assist your husband, depending on the exact reasons why he fails to please you.
   Should that not be applicable to the situation, I also have an advertisement from a 'Dan' for some penis enlargment products he apparently sells.
   If both of those methods fail to restore your relationship with your husband, I have received offers - from other pharmaceutical establishments - regarding pheromones that will 'make you irresistible to the opposite sex.' These could go a long way in securing another man to please you, should no one respond to your e-mail pleas.
   If your problem is of a different variety, I have many offers from barely-legal "teenage sluts", who have webcams and are, like yourself, at home alone. At the very least, you may find some common ground with them.
   Finally, should you require any funding, there is a member of the Nigerian royal family that I and many of my acquaitances have received e-mails from. They offer quite a good pay for safe storage of their money; if you are interested, I would be happy to provide you with contact information.

Sincerely,
   WMCoolmon

PS: For future reference, my name is spelled with vowels.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing
I once got one of those, and actually replied. I told him i needed money to start doing that stuff, and he should mail ME  1000 dollars. I never got a reply back.
 

I still think getting them to hold up a sign is better though

[Swamp_Thing]

I would really love to see them sending those 1000 dollars i asked. I wonder how they would feel if they, the scam artists, got scamed themselfs out of 1000 bucks. I could have asked for more, but i´m not a greedy bastard.

However, i´m sure there are a few people around that got suckered by that. Especially naive people who believe a total stranger would write especially to them and ask them to move a few bilions around. The people who do these scams are resourcefull. I remember the story they were pushing on me was of a nigerian (it´s always a nigerian, isn´t it?) rich family with a trunk full of cash, 6 billion dollars to be exact, that they "needed" smuggled out. They even sent me a picture of an actuall trunk full of money, and a newspaper article that corroborated this guy´s story. They aren´t dumb, i can tell you that. But it takes a dumb people to believe it.

I just would like to know how the hell they get our e-mail adresses...

[karajorma]

I did read a story where one guy managed to scam one of the 419 scammers out of a hundred quid or so. He said that he worked in a computer company and was willing to provide him with 20 computers. The Nigerian sent him a check (which was of course going to bounce).
 At the last minute the guy told the scammer that there was a small problem with getting permission to waive a fee the company charged. His boss would be willing to waive the fee he was certain but his boss would only be back in 4-5 days or so (before which the check would have bounced).
 So the guy gave the Nigerian a choice. Pay the fee by money order now and have it returned when the boss returned so the goods could be shipped or wait and have it waived in a few days time.
 The Nigerian paid up but then there was a "problem" at the company that stopped the computers being shipped anyway (during which time the check bounced) so they guy wrote back to the scammer saying that he was sorry about the problem but now his boss insisted on having another check which would have to clear before he'd send the PCs.

[Clave]

Yeah, they are pretty lame.  If someone said 'I'm leaving Nigeria with $6,000 do you want half?' it would be more believable then 'I have $6,000,000' I dunno....

[Swamp_Thing]

Maybe we should come up with a similar believable story, so that Grey Wolf replies to this wise guy, and we try to scam him off a few bucks. Maybe put the proffit in a fund for the purchase of the FS3 license.

[Turnsky]

i still remember those nigerean money giveaway scam emails..
i even got one via snail mail once.. incredibly well written, too... lit the fire quite nicely as well

[Grey Wolf]

I almost wish I hadn't deleted that e-mail before the first replies came up in this thread. That could have been fun...

[Triple Ace]

I got that the other day.

[kasperl]

I did get a few "you won the lottery" messages. Quite odd, since they say they're from a Dutch lottery, use German names, and English text. (For the record, me=Dutch).