The email is supposedly from a Mrs. Melissa Gorgers, but the email is from [email protected] and reads

Dearest One,

please pardon me for not knowing your mindset before contacting you and it is very confidential, i live in Togo but my country of origin is  Cote   d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and my name is Mrs. Melissa Gorgers the Wife of late Mr. Richard Gorgers, I pray that my plan with you Shall be of good success. After reading my message please kindly get back to me.

It’s my pleasure to contact you for a business venture which i intend to Establish in your country . Though I have not met with you before but I believe, One has to risk confiding in someone to succeed sometimes in life. There is this huge amount of 6.5 million U.S dollars (US$6.500, 000.00) Which my late husband kept in a security company in republic of Togo before he was Assassinated by unknown persons on his trip to France.

Now I and my daughter have decided to invest this money in your country or Anywhere safe enough for security and political reasons. We want you to help us to transfer these funds to your account for investment.

It goes on about how important this is and the need for confidentiality (because if you ask anyone about this they’ll tell you it’s a scam)

Then she asks what type of investment I recommend – property, clothes, charity, construction, transport etc.

And she offers me 25% for my efforts –  that’s  $1.625 million.

This is a typical Advance Fee scam, also known as a Nigerian 419 scam.

The scammer offers a very large sum of money for very little effort . This email doesn’t ask for any of my information as it’s just to start the scam. Once hooked she will no doubt provide lots of information, details of lawyers, accountants etc. and in time will come the need for me to pay small sums of money as release fees, or legal fees or something to keep the scam going.

Each time I pay will ‘definitely’ be the last such fee but then there will be another for some other reason and it keeps going until I stop paying.

Sad and pathetic.

Don’t be taken in by offers of free money – they are always scams.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.