[ExI] could a nigerian theoretically give away money?

[spike]

Imagine this scenario.  A lone Nigerian cooks up some really cool idea,
Microsloth buys it, so now the software developer has a ton of money,
completely legitimately, more than that lone genius could possibly spend.
Every day the geek's inbox overflows with all these absurd spams claiming to
be Nigerians wanting to give some random internet user a million US dollars,
if they would simply give their name, address, SSN and bank account number,
in order to know where to transfer in the money, and make it legal of
course.  

 

So imagine this perfectly legitimately rich Nigerian with a sense of humor
and absurd generosity writes a perfectly true but indistinguishable from
spam offer, along with a script to distribute it to random internet users,
explaining that a Nigerian wants to give away a pile of money, if the
recipient would merely supply a name, address, social security number and
bank account number.  The Nigerian fully intends to give that pile of money
to the first person to supply that info, all completely necessary to make it
theoretically possible to actually deposit the money into the recipient's
account.

 

How many pseudo-spam messages would she need to send out before anyone would
fall for the truth?

 

spike

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