The Nigerian e-mail scammers are taking a new tack in their recruiting. They're getting provocative.

A woman e-mailed me last night about the revised efforts: I NEED YOUR WILLINGNESS ASSISTANT. Due to my Willingness Assistant unexpectedly quitting on me last week, I had to interpret this sentence to mean that the sender wanted my own store of willingness. That wasn't a bad idea — good WA temps are hard to find quickly. If this woman wanted to take some of it off my hands, I was more than happy to be her assistant. Or at least consider the offer.

She came across as a successful young woman: I am MISS RACHEAL ANN, I am 26 Years old and also the chief accountant with Standard Trust Bank. Young and accomplished, eh? Not bad, I thought. Then things really got interesting: I have a transaction which I think will be of mutual benefit to both of us. In my desire for a foreign partner with whom to do this transaction, I stumbled on your contact from a business directory.

Oh my. A successful young woman wanted to find a "foreign partner" with whom to "have a transaction" for the "mutual benefit of both of us." Redundant but racy. I liked it.

Unfortunately, she went on to explain that this transcation would involve me dealing with a Nigerian "security company." They had two metal boxes filled with $45.5 million. I had to get the boxes from them. If that wasn't bad enough, she went on to explain a bunch of ground rules. Rule number five: YOU WILL NOT DISAPPEAR WITH OUR FUND AFTER YOU HAVE CLAIMED IT.

She lost me there.

Although she signed her e-mail Yours Faithfully MISS RACHEAL ANN, I knew she didn't mean it. I may be old fashioned, but I believe in people. There are some bad eggs in the world, sure; but they're a dime in a dozen box of eggs. Which is to say, pretty infrequent. And if Miss Racheal Ann couldn't trust me … then she just wasn't my kind of woman. As a great man once said, we can't build our dreams on suspicious minds.

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