Chances are; if you’ve owned an email account in the last decade, you’ve received hundreds of emails from generically named “Barristers” in West African countries informing you that a relative you’ve never heard of died in some horrific and unexpected way and you are the only beneficiary who can extract millions of dollars from the country.

The scam, which has been coined a “419 Scam” after the section of the Nigerian penal code to which it applies, has become so widely known and mocked that one would have to be an idiot to fall for it.

The same is becoming true with the Florida Sex Stings. You post or respond to an adult dating ad, you start talking with someone who you believe to be an adult, the conversations become more personal and sexual and then suddenly and unexpectedly they introduce a twist that they are a minor.

With the more notoriety that each scam receives, you have to wonder who still falls for them. Actually, not as many as used to, which is why the police have been getting creative by bending the rules and now going outside the country.

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Since the motivation behind both the 419 Scams and the Sex Stings are money (Nigerians get it from the targets and Police get it from taxpayers who fund the stings and from seized assets), it’s unlikely the scammers will stop anytime soon. The best we can do is bring awareness to the problem to help prevent more people from getting caught up in them.