Apparently, someone fell for the Nigerian spam scam. Supposedly:
According to statistics presented at the International Conference on Advance Fee (419) Frauds in New York on Sept. 17, roughly 1 percent of the millions of people who receive 419 e-mails and faxes are successfully scammed.
Annual losses to the scam in the United States total more than \\(100 million, and law enforcement officials believe global losses may total over \\)1.5 billion.