The writers' plans for you and your money, however, are bad, maybe even terminal, and according to the U.S. Secret Service (which devotes a special page on its Web site to 419 scams), "The letter, while appearing transparent and even ridiculous to most, unfortunately is growing in its effectiveness."

The 419 perpetrators employ a "con within a con" strategy, as the Secret Service explains it, and getting your bank account number in order to plunder your checking or savings is not the goal of the West African grifters. It's just the beginning of the relationship. As for the plundering, if things work out the way they hope, you'll do that for them. "The goal," the Secret Service says, "is to delude the target into thinking that he is being drawn into a very lucrative, albeit questionable, arrangement. [The victim] will become the primary supporter of the scheme and willingly contribute a large amount of money when the deal is threatened."

In most cases, once the sucker's on the hook, the scamsters inform him that there have been complications, a special upfront fee or tax is needed urgently or a government official must be bribed. The amounts of these advance fees can be extremely large (though they may seem a pittance next to the $8 million or so you'll be collecting for helping your new business partner), and it's by paying them that victims of the fraud bid farewell to their savings.

Anyway, that's all very illegal, not nice and boring, but the letters themselves are a hoot and worth spending a little time with. I've yet to receive two that duplicate each another. Each seems to be handcrafted and the writers pour in plenty of ostensibly personal details. Consider the syntactically challenged one I received just the other night from "Maurice Elodie Davidson":

As a result of my father's death, and with the news of my uncle's involvement in an air crash in January, dashed our hope of survival. The untimely deaths caused my mother's heart failure and other related complications of which she later died in the hospital after we must have spent a lot of money on her.
One's heart goes out to poor Maurice, who, if he should ever give up creative writing and international fraud, might consider a career in accounting -- or grief counseling. But there is hope, he confided in me, because his late father, "Sir Etienn Davidson, the [former] General Manager of Sierra Leone Mining Cooperation," left behind a wee nest egg -- "$US32,800,000" to be exact. "This money," Maurice explained, "was the income accrued from overpayments and personal diamond business at the mining cooperation."

In all the letters there is some kind of explanation as to where the glorious sum came from. The source is variously described as part of "$620 million which the late head of state placed in Luxembourg branch of German Bank warburg ... Luckily for us sir, the sum of 23.4 million has eluded the eyes of the Nigerian authority or their agents," or:

When I was a director in the Ministry Of Mines and Natural Resources, I was the link between the foreign buyers of DIAMOND and the SIERRA-LOENIAN Government. Just before the out broke of the Civil War in SIERRA-LEONE, there was some payment made to the Government of SIERRA-LEONE by our foreign Diamond buyers for the Diamond they purchased. I had to divert the sum Totaling up to Thirty-Two Million Dollars (US$32,000,000.00) into a security and finance company in Holland for safe keeping because of the Civil War.
or (note the use in the following passage of the ever popular "mistress in Lebanon" ploy to add a piquant dash of authenticity):
The former chief security officer to the late head of state major Hamza al Mustapha had private accounts that are worth 100 million United States dollars around the world. Presently he has been arrested by the government of the day and is presently in prison waiting to be taken to court on charges of gross human right abuses on the citizens of Nigeria. Shortly before the present government arrested my client, he entrusted to me the sum of twenty-six million, four hundred thousand united states dollars (us$26,400,000.00) for safekeeping. This amount was to be sent to his mistress in Lebanon to launder for him.

Just how, one wonders after reading the above, would the Lebanese mistress of Major Hamza al Mustapha have laundered $26,400,000? That's a considerable pile of laundry, and any misstep could cause great friction between her and her imprisoned lover, a relationship that sounds as if it is already a little complicated. Fortunately -- for reasons not altogether clear -- she was relieved of this onerous chore before it could begin.

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