“Compensation for Scam Victims” 419 scam doing rounds

The psychology and economics behind the so-called Nigerian advanced fee fraud scams have been recently been explained by Microsoft researcher Cormac Herley in great detail, and it all boils down to this: the scammers are interested in separating the most gullible users from those who are not very early in the game, in order to avoid spending their time on people who will ultimately see through the bogus emails.