I sincerely hope that this letter will not come to you as a surprise or embarrass you since we neither knew each other before nor had any previous correspondence or contact.

My partners and I plan to source for a reliable overseas Private (personal) or company's account into which this sum of US$20.5m (Twenty million, Five Hundred Thousand United State of American Dollars) shall be remitted into without raising doubts. This is the assistance and cooperation we seek of you.

To achieve this, assuming you are interested, we would want to present you as the beneficiary of this money so that it can be released to your account upon proper documentation. For this services, we propose to compensate you with 25% of this sum, 5% will be used in settlement of local and international expenses we shall incur in this process. The remainder of the money shall be kept for us pending our arrival in your country. I assure you that the entire process of documentation and release of funds shall take not more than 2 weeks as all safe arrangements of remittance has been concluded for a smooth operation. Furthermore, be sure that your company's line of business will not pose any form of hindrance to the over all success of this deal.

Finally, as respected members of the Nigeria Socio-Economic life, we count on you to treat this matter as strictly CONFIDENTIAL since we must not compromise our positions for anything. Whilst I thank you for taking the time to read through this letter, I look forward to your kind and fast response. In your reply, oblige me details of your bank account, your private / official Telephone and fax numbers.

Copious compendium of clumsy criminal clownery: