I once went out for dinner with a girl and the subject got onto email scammers. I said "who would be so utterly stupid as to fall for that crap?" She replied "well for one my grandmother."
Turns out she'd befriended one of those Nigerian scammers after replying to his email, and had transferred $100,000 to him over a few months. Even when her family found out and confronted her and told her she'd been duped, she insisted that she had no regrets and hoped the young man was enjoying the money
To the OP: where HAVE you been? On a related note, I just want to warn people about this guy going around New York bumping into people, dropping an old broken pair of spectacles and then demanding $100 for a new pair!