Nigerian Spam

Fraudulent Internet comes on such as this one are no longer news. They have been itinerating through the ether or landing in e-mail boxes for almost since the Internet has been operating. Yet just the fact that they are still out there indicates that people carry on falling for such scams.

Christopher Butler is a normal resident agent in charge at the U.S. Secret Service office in Riverside. This agency handles Internet fraud investigations.Butler says the Nigerian scam "has been going since so many years it's hard to believe the word hasn't got out. But people are still falling for that one."

Even if you are confidence enough to avoid the Third World-based scam may be such letters don't just come with Nigerian postmarks but there are others ready to woo your money away from you.

They come in the form of international sweepstakes prizes; free travel offers and even offers to purchase items you might have advertised for sale.

The trend is now increasing.

Figures from the National Consumers League, a regulator group, show that money lost to Internet scams are actually more than doubled from 2004 to 2005, from $5.8 billion to $13.9 billion.