A new twist to this email scam is beginning to appear. Emails are being sent from persons posing as American Soldiers in Iraq in order to gain your trust.

In these e-mails, a U.S. soldier based in Iraq claims that he has found a horde of cash or gold. The e-mail explains that the total "haul," which is often pegged at $750 million but can vary wildly, has been split among the men who found it. The soldier's take: $20 million. Unfortunately, after he was discharged from the army and returned to Iraq to work as a humanitarian worker, he was injured by a roadside bomb and now is on his deathbed.

"The doctors have told me point blank that I would die at any moment," the soldier writes in the spam message.

All the recipient has to do to collect the millions -- or sometimes only half, with the other going to a charity is give up an e-mail address and phone number.

We recommend people ignore these communications to avoid being victimized.

The original scam

My name abdul farouk, son of Chief Coulibaly farouk. I'm 26yrs old and a student. Please I would like you to assist me urgently before they kill me.
My father is a wealthy cocoa merchant. Trouble began early last year when my father's associates began suspecting that my father is not giving proper account of all the tons of cocoa being cultivated by local farmers in some villages. This mistrust deepened between sept, 2000 when they discovered a very big amount of moey that my father deposited with a security company here in Abidjan. As a result of this discovery and the enviness of the money, he was poisioned by his associates. At his hospital bed, he revealed to me where to get the documents of the said deposit and that he made me the next of kin, being the only child. He also advised me that in case he dies, that I should not stay in this country because his associates will equally kill me. He directed advised me that if he dies,I should look for a foreign partner who will help me to transfer the money into the person's account and the person will help me to invest the money in that country. My father finally died on 5th of june. Since then I have been out of school and gone into hiding for fear of my father's associates. All the documents of the 15 million Usd eqivallent of the amount are with me now . I will give you 25% of this money ,if you can help me to transfer this money into your account for onward investment in your country. Please contact me immediately with my E mail address or telephone number and include your telephone number and your Fax number to enable me send you all necessary documents as regards the money before they kill me. It is risk free I'm waiting for your urgent reply.

Residents of the Phoenix Metropolitan area have been receiving "E-Mails" from out of the United States, requesting assistance from individuals in exchange for a reward of money. This particular scam is called the "Nigerian Scam Letter", and has been in existence for numerous years. In the past, the correspondences were letters in the mail. Now, these letters are coming via e-mail.

The scam works as follows. The letters are usually generated from Nigeria, Africa. They introduce themselves and proceed to tell the person that they are trying to get their money out of the country due to a corrupt government. This is usually hundreds of millions of dollars. The Nigerian citizen will request the person set up bank accounts in America so they can transfer the money to them. If a U.S. citizen responds to the e-mail, the Nigerian citizen will eventually ask for personal or account information then tell the person that they need to wire them money (usually thousands of dollars) to help them set up this transfer. The Nigerian citizen will get as much money out of the person as possible. Of course the victim will never receive any rewards and will lose all money wired to the suspect.

Prosecution is often difficult since it originates from overseas in a country that has not been known to be fully cooperative. The United States Secret Service does investigate these issues but is easily overwhelmed by the volume of letters/e-mails issued. We recommend people ignore these communications to avoid being victimized and report the incident to the USSS at (602) 640-5580 only when they have lost money. Please be forewarned the successful prosecution and recovery of funds may be difficult if not impossible, so do not chance your investments on "get rich" scams.