JOHN SIMPSON

I must be the luckiest man on earth. Offers of money are constantly being showered on me. A year ago, I was promised a fortune by the widow of General Sani Abacha, the unlamented dictator of Nigeria who died 12 years ago in the arms of one of his under-age lovers. Mrs Abacha, who wrote to me from here in Madrid, was nice enough to offer me the lion's share of the proceeds from her husband's will. But it did seem slightly odd that she should have spelt her husband's name wrong.

Recently, a self-confessedly crooked vice president of the Madrid branch of a Middle Eastern bank emailed me, explaining his difficulties in getting hold of the money he'd embezzled, and offering me half of it in exchange for helping him. All I had to do was to send him my own bank details.

As for the concept of the dodgy lottery prize, I first came across it seven years ago. Then, too, the message emanated from Madrid. I was sitting in the London offices of my brother-in-law, Mark, who is also my agent, when the fax machine sprang into life and offered me lots of money. I assumed even then that it must be a con: perhaps I've led a sheltered life, but in my experience offers of silly money are never genuine. Mark suggested that if we paid a visit to the man who had sent me the fax, it would make a good newspaper story. I would write it, he would take the pictures. I found a foreign editor who liked the idea, and made an appointment with a dubious character down the line to Madrid. We went to see him a couple of days later.

Mark and I often talk about it still: it was hugely enjoyable, with an amusing but faint element of risk. In a smart area of central Madrid, we were shown into a third-floor office of the kind you hire by the hour for meetings. A large man in an expensive suit greeted us. Some of the office stuff on his desk — files, blotter, hole-punch, pen-set — still had price labels on them. He dripped with gold.

He was, he said, South African, but I thought he came from West Africa. Mark, who's from South Africa himself, agreed. Soon the big man's effusiveness faded, and he became suspicious. He explained that I must pay him a facility fee of a mere £1,000. Directly the cheque cleared, my full winnings would be sent to my bank account. Could I have a receipt? Well, he said, he'd have to check that with his colleague. He screamed into his mobile in a language that sounded like Hausa and, as he did so, Mark took a photo of him on his own mobile. His was brand-new, the first model to have a camera built in to it. Unfortunately it also had a built-in shutter noise, so directly Mark got his picture, we were rumbled.

Now the man behind the desk was getting worked up, so I thought I'd better get my chequebook out. That made it easier for me to reach for the receipt book. I saw at least a dozen receipts in it, some for quite large amounts of money. 'My colleague is coming,' said the man at the desk, menacingly.

Mark and I looked at each other and said our goodbyes. We raced out of the building, still laughing, and spent the next few hours having lunch in a delightful Peruvian restaurant. Mark's photos and my article made a good page in the newspaper, and lots of people wrote to me telling me how they'd lost money in similar scams.

And now here I am, briefly back in Madrid. As I opened up my emails a moment ago, my eyes fell on a propitious but distinctly un-English phrase: 'We are so pleased to inform you...'Yes, I've won third prize in Spain's El Gordo lottery: £2.8 million. All I have to do to get my money is to telephone their headquarters on a Spanish mobile number. All right, here goes. 'Hello?' says a thick, wary voice, after a lot of rings. 'Could I speak to the vice president of International Promotions at the Prize Award Department, Mr Quincy Seguross, please?' I say in my best Spanish.

'Please?' says the voice, thicker and warier than ever. I repeat the question in English. 'OK,' says the voice, suddenly relieved. 'That's me.'Quincy isn't a particularly Spanish name, and Seguross is spelt oddly. Funny how often dodgy misspellings and offers of huge amounts of money go together in emails. Funny, too, that I should have won so much money without actually buying a lottery ticket.'Hello, Quincy,' I say, and explain I'm one of his winners. He relaxes, and slips into his patter. He wants, in short order, my reference, address, phone number and bank account number. 'Could you tell me something first, Quincy?' The voice gets wary again. 'Isn't  it a bit weird that the vice president of a big Spanish lottery company doesn't speak Spanish? And how come your office number is a mobile phone?' 'Ahhhhh,' says Quincy Seguross thoughtfully, and rings off.

The real El Gordo Lottery warns people extensively about such con tricks on its website — though sometimes in English which is almost as odd as the crooks': 'We place in the police knowledge every scam that people report to us.'You might have thought that everyone on earth would have heard about confidence tricks like these by now, and that no one would be left to be conned. Not so, apparently I reach for the phone to make an appointment to go round and turn Quincy Seguross over. Then I decide against it. Without Mark it wouldn't be nearly such fun. And anyway, jokes never work quite as well the second time. 

• Tweet