Scam alert: Still waiting for £3 million

I received an e-mail a few days ago from someone purporting to be a US Army sergeant serving in Afghanistan, saying he had noted my name on The Baron.

He asked me to contact him in return, saying he had an "interesting offer" for me. 

I did not reply because just the day before I'd received an e-mail purportedly coming from a provincial English lawyer (had his address and plenty of other convincing details which I checked) saying he was trying to track down relatives of a man with my family name who died a few years ago leaving £3 million unclaimed.

That message gave me a UK telephone number to contact which my brother Charles identified on the web as being a cellphone already used in several known scam attempts between the UK and Australia. My other brother noted that the lawyer's e-mail address was in part the same as that of a Russian internet company. I contacted the real UK lawyer who knew all about these attempts but could do little about them.

And so far, no one has sent me £3 million. ■