We’ve all received those e-mails from a Nigerian prince who is set to inherit a fortune, but needs your help to unlock the funds through an in-kind donation to be wired overseas.

Thousands of people have succumbed to this ploy (which is also known as a “419” scam). The weird thing about this criminal activity? There are marketing lessons to be learned here!

Recently, there was an interesting piece of information revealed about these scams. Even though seemingly everyone knows to look out for Nigerian royalty set to inherit millions, the scam still works. It turns out there are still just enough gullible people in the world willing to fork over some cash. To expand their “consumer base,” you would think that the scammers would start pretending to be Azerbaijani Barons, Luxembourg princesses, or deposed North Korean party members. That makes sense; right?

Expanding the consumer base by alerting whatever title they advertise under would be an inefficient way for the criminals to do business. People are wary of wire transfers now, but a lot of folks will still start up a conversation with someone who is from France to possibly see the situation out. In the end, however, there’s no way that they will pay up. Or at least that is what the bad guys discovered.

The ROI on non-Nigerian scams wasn’t worth the time needed to lure in thevery few folks that “bit.” Instead, they focused on just continuing the Nigerian prince scam, which was either automatically ignored or easily bought into with little grey area.

They have set up a scheme that will weed out the people who won’t take the bait. Then, they have a pre- scripted system for folks who decide to help out a fake foreign dignitary. They can rely on the evergreen material they’ve created through past successful interactions.

So, the question remains: Is your marketing as good as a Nigerian prince’s?