Nigerian Prince's Biggest Investor

We've all gotten the email - some prince in Nigeria needs your help to move millions of dollars around and if you send $100 here and $1000 there you get it back a thousand fold. This king of all internet scams is so unbelievable it's been poked fun at a thousand times - even Saturday Night Live has referenced it a couple of times (most recently Anne Hathaway joked: "I found this amazing new guy, we met on the internet. I usually don't read letters from strangers, but how often do you get an email from a Nigerian Prince? He's such a sweetheart, and - not that it matters - but he's incredibly wealthy.")

That's funny and all, but consider this: the scam is still out there for a reason, and that reason is that there are actually people still falling for it.

For example, Janella Spears from Sweet Home, Oregon recently "went public" with her experiences - a story that ultimately ends with the nursing administrator and reverend investing over $400,000 into the fictitious deal.

$400,000. That's almost half a million dollars she shipped away, and not all in one payment, mind you. This was a total achieved over two years of scammage, and all of it seems gone for good (which, by the way, begs the question - where did it go?).

Embarrassing, yes. Legal, no-ish. Morally derisive, definitely.