Nigeria has a well-earned reputation for fraud, although the credit card thefts being attempted lately in Roanoke are much simpler than what's been termed "the Nigerian scam."

That scam, known more properly as "advance-fee fraud," isn't new -- just the delivery method is. It's been around since the 16th century, when it was done via postal mail and targeted wealthy merchants and churches.

Back then, it was known as the "Spanish Prisoner Letter." A rich man imprisoned in Spain needs help getting out of prison -- money for bribes and the like. For that upfront cash, he promises riches upon his release. Naturally, it never appears.

Today, thanks to electronic communications, it's not just rich folks and churches being targeted. It's anyone with an e-mail address.

The scam works like this:

A mark gets a message from someone in Nigeria -- royalty, a rich businessman, etc. -- who claims to need a way to transfer large sums of money out of the country discreetly. All they need is access to the bank account of a helpful person in the outside world, to which they'll give a percentage of that money once it's out of the country.

Most people recognize that something that sounds too good to be true almost always is. But not everyone. The gullible will not only give out their financial information, but will send thousands of dollars to cover "bribes" or "transfer fees."

Needless to say, they never see that money again. Nor do the millions they were promised ever turn up.

Nigeria is known so well for those scams that its "Internet entrepreneurs" received the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for Literature. (Presented by Nobel laureates, the Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded every year at Harvard's Sanders Theatre to the world's most amusing and outlandish studies, experiments, and products.)

The award was given "for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters ... each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled."