Nigerian scams don't come from Nigeria, they're here in the U.S.

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Money flows have been shut off into and out of Nigeria, whose Internet cafes were being used to rip off Westerners for years. The most notorious Nigerian scams are now out of Houston, Texas. In a recent special on MSNBC, it was disclosed that many Nigerians living in the Houston area had literally hundreds of names, aliases, and many didn't even remember or cared to even know their birth name. Most of them got state of Texas driver's licenses, many getting dozens of different licenses and many hijacking Social Security numbers and identities of dead people. They got the numbers and names easily -- at the public records offices by ordering up death certificates of people who recently died. They would pick out the younger people who more closely matched the age of the Nigerians -- remember, all the data is right their on the death certificate, including the SSN -- and it's all public record. Now, how does one avoid the scams? Don't open any unfamiliar e-mail, and especially avoid those easily faked sob stories about having $400 million stashed away in a bank in Rwanda that they can't get out without first paying a $4,000 deposit for "expenses." Yeah, right. Anyone who believes that one deserves to get ripped off.