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silicon.com Classics: 'Nigerian' money scam - What happens when you reply?
Meet Mr Madu Frank in a silicon.com special...

By silicon.com

Published: Monday 04 February 2008

In the first of a new weekly series looking back at the classic silicon.com stories of the last decade we revisit an encounter with a gentleman calling himself Mr Madu Frank.

Everyone is now familiar with these 419 scam emails, so called because of the section of the criminal code in Nigeria (where a number of these emails have originated) which deals with fraud. These emails usually purporting to be from a banker or lawyer offering the recipient a slice of some deceased former president's fortune for laundering the money through their account.

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silicon.com set up a hotmail account and received an email from Mr Madu Frank, promising some $20m for doing this. All he needed, of course, was some money to cover 'administrative costs' and bank account details and photocopies of passports and other ID documents.

Anybody who has ever received one of these scam emails will probably have asked themselves the same question - what would happen if I replied?

Find out in this hilarious transcript of the email conversation that took place over several weeks between silicon.com and Mr Madu Frank when we did reply to claim our share of the fortune.