It is a major misconception that the Nigerian e-mail scammers are after your bank account information. What they are actually running is an "advance-fee fraud." After you give them your account info and all the rest of that stuff, they will tell you that they were just about the send you the money, but that the bank needs you to pay a $500 fee to get the money out of escrow. If you wire them the $500 over Western Union, they'll come up with something else which needs to be done, e.g. a sick relative, a bribe to a state official, etc. They'll string you along with these advance fees for as long as possible. In some cases, they'll try to get you to go down to Nigeria yourself where you'll be kidnapped and held for ransom. The whole scam is remarkably low-tech, and not at all what most people expect.