I don't recall how long ago, but there was a sign company who actually fell for it and lost a crapload of money. Hard to believe but they keep finding gullible victims. I guess with seven billion people on the planet, the percentage odds are still pretty good for the thieves...
Oh sure. These guys are a bit strange though.
Most people wonder why the African prince scam is so obvious and why the scammers don't mix it up a bit to make it look and sound legit. The reason they don't do that is because they WANT it to sound ridiculous and the reason for that is...sending spam is cheap, hiring people is not. They can send hundreds of millions of spam mails for peanuts so what happens if your scam is believable and from those 100 million emails you sent 1 million people reply and ask you a question about the whole thing. You would have to hire a crap load of people to process these guys, who are now basically leads into a conversion, that costs a crapton of money. On the other hand you have this story that nobody who's been online for more than 15 minutes will believe, you want someone who won't ask any questions, you want someone who will first wire the money and only then ask questions but then it's already too late, they already have the money. So basically they're setting the common denominator on the most guidable of internet users.
On a related note, the online scam industry isn't that profitable to be honest. Worldwide it's estimated that it's worth around 100 million per year. Governments and companies spend billions per year fighting spam, so it's not even on par.