Message text written by "``We've no telephone,          and we've stopped
opening our mail.  You can't imagine how free we"
>The Nigerian Fraud Email Gallery,
> at http://potifos.com/fraud/<

I look forward to viewing the gallery. 

I was an early recipient of one of these letters, via real snail mail from
Nigeria, back in 1991 or so. I still have the letter. It was so crudely
done that I couldn't imagine anyone being deceived by it. It was an obvious
photocopy of an original typed on a manual typewriter (wavy type lines and
all), with my name typed into the copy. Then the content was what it always
is. I believe I was a recipient at that time because I was then selling ad
space for a publication called African Airlines, and my name and address
appeared in the magazine. The editor and publisher, who was coincidentally
a Nigerian resident in England, received one also and published a short
item in the magazine, ridiculing the scam. Amazing that it is still going
on, in many variations, and that people have actually fallen for it.
Illustrates the con artists' principle that the ideal mark is someone so
greedy that their ability to detect a scam is impaired. Nigeria is so
corrupt that almost anything is believable. It would not surprise me if the
government people supposedly trying to stamp out the scam were actually in
on it. 

DW

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