I've been receiving another batch of the Nigerian Fraud Letter -- the now-familiar plea for help defrauding a third-world government by lending a stranger your bank account. They used to come in the post, now they come in email. I get one every week or so.

But I had no idea how many people fall for the scam. According to crimes-of-persuasion.com:

U. S. Secret Service agents have been assigned on a temporary basis to the American Embassy in Lagos to locate and rescue potential victims. In one month alone, in the summer of 1995, agents extricated seven U.S. victims from Nigeria, though one American was murdered while pursuing his lost money and numerous other foreign nationals have been reported as missing.