Do you mean you’ve received several Nigerian scam E-mails or you have received several legitimate E-mails from Nigerians?
It’s well written (or at least, has certain prosaic qualities) for a romance scam, but it’s pretty certainly a romance scam.
With romance scams, there usually isn’t. It’s typically only when the victim is well and truly hooked - after the scammer has been murmuring promises of love, and the victim has responded in kind, that there will be some reason why the victim needs to part with money - usually the scammer experiences some sort of sudden crisis - an illness, loss of important travel documents (on the way to the airport to meet the victim as well), is mugged, etc.
BTW, I got a rather nice one today from someone whose email account is named ‘Mr Jones Williams’, but signed off their email at the bottom ‘Mr William Jone’ - just the singular, clearly.
Okay, here’s yer booby pics, lots and lots of booby pics, ya perv.
(You had to know this was coming, didn’tcha?)
Holy crap, the level of English in the UNITED STATES is as bad as the stereotypical “Nigerian Email Scam” email! 
Do you read reddit, or the reader comments in online publications? It’s not just the spelling and grammar that are abysmal-- finding a decent sentence that expresses an idea well is a challenge.
My good friend (of blessed memory) taught graphic design at the local community college. Many of his students couldn’t read or write higher than a fourth grade level when they arrived at college and spent a semester or more attending remedial English classes. These weren’t new immigrants-- they were products of the public school system.
He’d give an assignment such as to draw an editorial cartoon based on something in the local newspaper, and students couldn’t comprehend what they were reading well enough to identify an idea that they could express in a drawing. Although, interestingly, most of them were excellent at drawing and already knew Photoshop and Illustrator.
The e-mail sounds darn genuine to me.
A scammer would have signed off as Brigitte from Sweden, not Wilma.
Supposedly, the bad language is intentional as a sort of automatic filter. People who are bright enough to pick up on the awful language are the sorts who aren’t likely to be taken in by the ruse. Filter some of them out, and it improves the scammer’s efficiency.
So it’s on purpose, basically.
Several Nigerian scam e-mails over the years as well as from other countries. (And not just Africa. I received a plea from the wife of a deposed Thai prime minister, asking if she could park her funds in my bank account, if I could just give her the details.) I’ve never known any Nigerians per se, but I have known other Africans, and yes, their English can be quite good. Presumably, they do not get hired by the scammers.
I read a great article in he old International Herald Tribune long ago that featured the actual European representative of Nigeria’s central bank. His job was to convince European businessmen to invest in Nigeria. You can guess how well that went over. He was very philosophical about it. Said a lot of the meetings he managed to get scheduled was just to see if he was for real.
I also remember one businessman in Singapore who fell for the Nigerian scam, lock, stock and barrel. He kept sending money and sending money for what he thought was a great investment opportunity, but always they wanted more due to this or that obstacle springing up. Finally he became suspicious and voiced his concerns, so they invited him to come to Nigeria and see the operation for himself. He took them up on the offer … and was kidnapped by them the moment he stepped off the plane! His relatives ransomed him, and he went public to warn others.
I have a friend who gets these constantly on Facebook. She responds to all of those idiotic phishing chain posts, and can’t understand why she gets scam mail.
I’ll bet you 10 to 1 that “Wilma” is not from Sweden or of the female persuasion.
Now you watch your mouth. You’re talking about the woman I love, here!
I don’t get these e-mails, but I get hundreds of friend/follower requests on social media that start exactly with this type of language. Within 3-4 private messages, she will ask for a small amount like $10 for some food because there is nothing to eat in her flat, but could you send it as a Steam gift card?
Or a drug ring in South America… (my husband knew this professor slightly - decades before the incident that catapulted him to fame).
My question was not about the caliber of English in the scam E-mail, but rather the caliber of English in general in Nigeria. It’s not like English isn’t used there.
I’m not suggesting I ever found images of expired Steam cards online (especially blurry ones) and sent those, because that would be a terrible waste of their time.
Wow, talk about milking a rube for all they’re worth! I wish I’d thought of that. Republican grifters, take note!
Surely the Nigerians must’ve known he would blow the lid off the whole shebang after they release him, and bring a premature end to their cash cow? I wonder if, from the perspective of the Nigerians, it would have been better for their long-term goals if they had snuffed him, even if he told acquaintances what he was up to.
I participate in a language exchange app to help me keep up with my Japanese. I’ve made a good number of friends, and have talked to many people who were targeted by romantic scammers, and while most people don’t fall for it, one actually sent money. (Her father had just passed away a few month before and she was in a very vulnerable position.)
Some of these scammers are dedicated, texting many times a day for several months before attempting the scam. Many are most obvious about it of course.
A very common story was that the guy was in the military, often as a doctor, and was stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Then they good looking guy would fall in love with the mark, and promise to send money in a box, or for some reason wouldn’t have access to his online bank and needed some money for just the weekend.
One guy sent a picture of himself in first class on the trip to Singapore. Then said he signed a mulitmillion dollar contract. Then said that his credit card had a problem and he needed a couple of hundred bucks. My friend who was his intended mark and I laughed about the absolute improvability of that one.
The funniest one was a guy who claimed to be an American marine engineer, on a ship near Indonesia. He chatted with my friend for a couple of months, many times a day.
One day, he suddenly claimed that their ship was attacked by pirates! And they lost most of their internet connection and he wanted her to transfer money from one of his bank accounts to the other. The scam of course was that he provided incomplete information so then he would ask her to transfer money from her account.
She called me and asked me what I thought while that was happening and I pointed out that he should be getting help from his company, not some random friend on the internet.
Another one was some guy who claimed to be a gemmologists and had big deal going on, but was on a ship near France, with bad internet. He wanted to send a package of several hundreds of thousands of dollars of gems to her in Japan for (some reason or not, not really explained well). Of course the expected scam then would be that he would ask for money. She immediately blocked him.
I haven’t had any interesting things happen to me. On that site, there are more male scammers than female ones. Of course, the “female” scammers are just men who use pics of hot women.
I’ve received a great many, and lots of them are written in very nice English.
My all time favorite was “from” a guy who worked in the national medical arm of… Maybe the Congo, and he said he had spent most of his life embezzling funds sent by international aid agencies. But now, near death, he felt guilty. And to assuage his guilt, he wanted to give that money to a good person, ME!
It’s sad that my Google-Fu is not powerful enough to find that article, I would love to read it. Failing that, your post (including the next story) is a good alternative to cheer my day up, thanks!
Nice one. But TBH, Wilma is not that unusual of a name in Sweden. They chose well.