Posted on this a couple of weeks ago. The bottom line is that despite what it looks like, if you have to email someone in private to close the deal it's a scam. There are loads of these emails, so the email address though thoughtful, is a minor detail.
The scam is always send money first and nothing heard from that moment. Ultimately, these scams are clever to an extent and must be fooling some people. Recently an elderly Czech citizen shot a Nigerian embassy official after he was scammed by a Nigerian 419 scammer (look up google, about 419 scams).
Most amusingly, last month I was approached to do a one off bass gig in South Africa. The cheque came to me in advance, and was for about USD$4000. If you cash this, it will show in your account for a while before it bounces, and your employers will ask you to pay this company or that company for this or that ( in this case, a nominated charter flight); out of funds supposedly advanced to you. of course, this is where the fraud occurs. The cheque is fraudulent. In my case the cheque was supposedly from a bank I know, but looks like nothing like a real one.
Most of these frauds are Nigerian, or mainland Chinese. What is clever about these scams is that they are not for extremely large sums of money.
FYI, the authorities frankly don't give a damn.
(Message edited by 0vid on September 11, 2006)
