Actually some of the scams are beautifully written. Winston Churchill would have been proud of some of them.
One can tell it's a con because few people can spell more than their name nowadays
It's obvious it must be a con but I do sometimes wonder how it works. For example I get a lot of African "potential customers" wanting to buy my (fairly specialised) electronic products. What the hell can they do with them? About as useful to them as a machine for making bra straps would be to me.