We’ve all gotten the e-mails. Someone in a faraway country — maybe Nigeria — claims you’ve inherited millions of dollars. To get the money, all you need to do is send a few thousand dollars to help the e-mail writer get the money out of the country?

For most people, the correspondence is worth a few laughs the first time around; repeat messages are deleted or go straight to your spam folder. Really, could anyone fall for this scam? And can authorities ever hope to track down the perpetrators.