I got one of the letters from Nigeria a couple of years ago. I showed it to someone who laughed and laughed! A few weeks later, I was
visiting him and he handed me a big folder full of information on the Nigerian letters and some copycats.
I think I even saw something on 20/20 or 60 Minutes on this once.
These guys prey on small business owners. It sounds real good on the surface, but after you respond they typically ask you to send them
a "good faith" payment of around $10,000. After all, you're getting a huge chunk of several million, so what's $10k? Once that first
"good faith" payment was made, some people were reported to have sent almost $100k for one ridiculous reason after another until it
became apparent this was just a scam.
The bottom line is, if they're outside US Jurisdiction, you're never going to recover anything that you might lose.
Avoid them like the plague.
-David Schwartz