Reporter's daydreams vanish on new email scam

Actually, it appeared that Inglis was offering much more than 40% of 65,000GBP and had merely mistyped the amount because he had listed three additional zeroes following the period in his figure: "65,000.000GBP."

Surely, I believed, Inglis would correct this error and improve my cut to a cool $38.5 million or so if I only pledged my assistance.

After all, anyone can make a mistake. I made one myself once.

So, visions of retirement to the South Seas danced in my head. But the reporter's instincts remained active as well.

I responded immediately, asking Inglis for more details on this project in the Middle East. While I was at it -- with a highly placed industry executive at my mercy -- I figured I should also ask his comments on projections for the price of oil into the future, while seeking a big-picture type analysis of the industry's turmoil.

One last story for Platts Oilgram News wouldn't take that much time away from my retirement planning.

And I also sought clarification on a line in his email that read: "Please note that fund was discreetly generated and concealed under strict non-disclosure modalities."

What, I also queried, are "modalities?"

Before I could contact my real estate agent to start pricing ranch estates in Fiji, however, I noticed that my reply email had instantly returned "undeliverable" for unknown reasons.

Undaunted, I contacted BP directly in London to plead for a second chance.

Imagine my shock to learn the email had been nothing more than a hoax, a sophisticated escalation of the classic Nigerian email scams of the last decade tailored more specifically for oil industry recipients.

"We have taken requisite action to make sure it doesn't harm anyone," explained a BP spokesman with a mixture of mirth and irritation.

"There are scams going on all over the place," he said. "This domain has now been shut down."

Although the email was obviously a fake betrayed by its erratic language and punctuation errors, its existence should serve as a cautionary note for anyone listed among attendees at industry conferences in the months ahead.

The email scam artists are employing new tricks to attract your attention once they secure your address. In this case, they masqueraded as an actual director of a major oil company to establish a tone of authority and targeted someone with a connection to the industry.

Would anyone besides a gullible and clueless news reporter ever fall for such a trick? I asked a source in BP's legal department.

His stoic reply: "They still take the time to send them out. There must be a reason they do it."