These are the words with which an email that may arrive in any of our inboxes begins. It is full of grammatical and spelling errors, but promises the recipient a great deal of money. It is not a gift from Santa Claus or a miracle, but a Nigerian scam.
The letter contains a number of grammatical and spelling errors. Many words lack Polish diacritical marks, and it is impossible not to get the impression that the text was incompetently translated using an online translator. The author of the letter tries to convince the recipient that they are a very distant relative of a wealthy businessman who died, along with his family, in a plane crash, and that whoever receives the email is the millionaire’s sole heir.
To begin the inheritance procedure, one must send back their personal details: first name, surname, address and contact telephone number. However, as the situation develops, payments must be made toward costs that successively arise. As a result, the supposed heir receives no inheritance and incurs only expenses. This is a typical example of a Nigerian scam.
Opportunities of this kind appear on the internet especially during the holiday season. Police warn against engaging in this type of correspondence. If we have any doubts, we should contact police officers. So let us not be fooled—easy money and exceptional bargains are among the methods used by criminals.
A Nigerian scam, or Nigerian fraud, is a fraud most often initiated through contact by email. It involves drawing a victim—formerly randomly selected, but increasingly specifically targeted—into a psychological game whose plot is based on the fictitious transfer of a large, often excessively inflated sum of money, sometimes amounting to several million pounds or US dollars, from one of the African countries, most often Nigeria. Today, however, it may involve any other country; the United Kingdom and Spain are increasingly featured. The aim is to extort money.
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