what a lucky day

For about the third time today, I have been given an opportunity to broker the transfer of several million dollars and keep a large percentage of it myself. My reputation for honesty is so good that complete strangers ask me to make these cash transfers with great regularity.

Having read a few articles about these e-mails, I’m aware that enough people fall for them that they are financially worth continuing for their organizers. I even heard at one point that they were Nigeria’s #2 earner of hard currency, after oil.

But we’re now in 2009 and these things have been going on for a very long time. Who, in demographic terms, are the people who are still falling for the scams? And how many of them are there? I’d be curious to see some numbers. So far I’ve mostly heard general descriptions and a few anecdotes.

The really alarming part about the Nigerian stories, as I recall, is that they usually have deal enforcers (cousins of the deal initiators, or something) present in the United States or Europe. Those who try to back out at the last minute will have a gang show up at their house saying “you’re in way too deep to back out now”, that sort of thing.