Flutterby™! : Respectfully Dear Sir

This interesting story from the LA Times gives the Lagos side of the ever-present 419 scam letters from Nigeria, with their Edwardian verbiage and Machiavellian scheming. That $500 you might lose goes a long way in the slums of the Bight of Benin.

It reminds me of a memorable line from the old crime-show Cagney and Lacey. The head of the Bunco Squad is lecturing the cops on the venerable Pigeon Drop Swindle. Just as he's getting to the part where the victim is induced to put up cash as a bond to allegedly later acquire the found money, one detective says that she never understood this part, why anybody would make the conceptual leap from keeping the money to giveing away more. The Bunco man looks at her with a mournful face and says, "Nobody understands, Detective. Nobody".