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I just got this spam:

Mr. James Khumalo
NedBank Johannesburg
South Africa.


Dear Sir,

Courtesy of Business opportunity, I take liberty
anchored on strong desire to solicit for your
assistance on this mutual beneficial and risk free
transaction with you, which I hope you give urgent
attention. To be precise, I am James Khumalo the
Manager of Bills/Exchange at the Foreign
Exchange/Remittance Department of NEDBANK South
Africa. In my department, we discovered an abandoned
sum of US$10,000,000.00 (Ten Million United States
Dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our
customers who died along with his entire family in
1988 Lockerbie Pan American Airline plane crash.

Since we got information about his death, we have been
expecting his next of Kin to come over and claim his
money, because we can not release it unless somebody
applied for its next of Kin or Relation to the
deceased as indicated in our banking procedure, but
unfortunately to no avail, and nobody has come forward
to claim the money (because the mentioned next of kin
which is Son died as well).

Therefore, upon this discovery I and other two
officials in my department now decide to establish a
cordial business relationship with you, hence my
contacting you. We want you to purportedly present
your good self as the next of Kin or relation of the
deceased so that we can prepare documentations and
release the funds (US$10 Million) into your account
for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is
coming for it and again we do not want the funds to go
into the Governments account as "Unclaimed Bill".

The banking law and procedures herein stipulates that
any account abandoned or dormant for a period of some
years is subjected to be closed and all money
contained therein will be forfeited to the Government
Treasury Account. Now it is being speculated that the
above sum will be transferred into Government Treasury
Account as unclaimed funds on or before July 2004. The
reason for you to present your good self as the next
of kin in occasioned by the fact that the deceased
customer was a foreigner.

Mode of sharing after the successful completion of the
transfer is as follows, for the role you will be
expected to play in the whole exercise, we have agreed
to give you twenty five (25%) of the total sum, and 5%
has been set aside for expenses we are going to
encounter by both parties in the process of this
transaction and the remaining 70% shall be for my
colleagues and I. In support of the aforementioned,
you are urged to reply this letter indicating your
readiness and interest to participate in the business.
After you reply, you will be advised on the next step
forward.

I quite believe that you will protect our interest by
keeping this business Top Secret and Confidential, as
your interest will be equally protected in order to
achieve and maintain maximum confidentiality. Trust to
hear from you on the above numbers as I count on your
earliest response.

Yours truly,

Mr. James Khumalo




Do people actually fall for these? Surely? Who could fall for this and be able to operate a computer??

The same ones who deletes their windows directory when told that they need to clean up their harddrive I guess...

Or the ones so lonely they're hoping each day that an email will show up in their inbox, no matter if it's spam or not....

Good Lord, are these people still around? Sheesh! I remember reading about a year ago when some guy that was running a site kept this guy going for a few months. Absolutely hilarious!

I've been getting those for years, we've even had a few good laughs about those emails in the IRC channel.

lol. i got a email saying some rich guy in nigeria died and left me with a fortune of $80million. they asked for my account # to transfer the funds. too bad im not a retard

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/35240.html

so where do I send my cheque and bank details

Sad, sad sad state of affairs...and to think some people actually fall for it...