Nigerian lawyers want to send me millions of dollars!

Apparently in Nigeria there have been a number of explosionsand mishaps and each time this happens in their country somebody seems to leave millions of dollars and no blood relatives who are able to claim the fortune. Do you know who gets the money in that event?

Me!

I know. Seems a little odd. But that's the way they do it. The lawyers do a massive internet search for any person with the same last name, or just a foreigner, who will take this money off of their hands. It turns out that in nine seperate mishaps/explosions that person turned out to be yours truly.

Now, it may seem a little suspicious that I'd be so lucky to be the benificiary of such mishaps/explosions, but the fact of the matter is: I am that lucky. What other explanation could there be?

It's totally legit. Do you know how I know this? The lawyers all told me so, without me even having to ask them. They just vounteered this information and not only that, they did so with lots of exclaimation points!!!!!! If I'd needed any more convincing, those emphatic punctuation marks surely made the case. Lawyers don't just throw those in anywhere unless what they're telling you is urgent and important.

Also, I can tell it's a real proposition because they've told me not to call the authorities, which can mean only one thing: It's so much on the up and up that I don't have to bother the legal establishment at all. I've even been assured that it is not a scam, which can only mean that it's all totally honest, because totally honest people always make a point to let you know that they're not lying to you or ripping you off.

My total take so far is one hundred and ninety nine million and a half. I'm waiting until all the yacht catalogs I ordered come in before contacting these lawyers because I want to make sure I know beforehand how I'm going to spend my fabulous wealth.

Or not. Sigh.

Actually, I did bite in a small way on the first one of these E-mail letters that came my way. I bought it at first, sort of, in a way. Because I really wanted to believe that life changing money could fall in my lap in this way. I'd coincidentally been filling out some of these PCH forms and when I read this letter I treated it like one more lottery or prize-winning contest.

So, I sent this first lawyer - by E-mail - my telephone number. My reasoning was that he couldn't rip me off with this information, because if that were the case then anybody with a phone book could do so, to any person in there who had a listing.

As I should have been able to predict, he called and asked me for my bank account number so that he could get my millions of dollars transferred. He left a message on my machine, so I wasn't able to talk with this fellow directly and then, of course, I didn't call him back. It saddened me to realize that I wasn't going to be a millionaire and there probably wasn't a 'Sir Richard Sommers' who perished in a pipeline explosion with his entire known family, leaving only me to inherit.

Even sadder, I told this story in class and was told of an older man who had lost seventy thousand dollars in a deal that was almost exactly the same as the one I related. That should be a warning. There are people out there who think that they have more of a right to your hard earned money than you do, if you make the unforgivable mistake of trusting them.

Nigeria, by the way, is a fantastically corrupt place. Sixty Minutes did a story on the place where Mike Wallace boutght identity papers proving that he was a Nigerian citizen. They weren't forged, either, he got them by bribing public officials.

Steve Sommers is the author of Breakfast with the Antichrist. Visit his Website at http://www.breakfastwiththeantichrist.com