You've probably received one of those ridiculous Nigerian Prince e-mail scams. Someone in Nigeria needs help getting a large sum of money out of the country. All you need to do is lend them a smaller (but still hefty) sum, and they'll give you a cut of the fortunes that this prince has hidden away in the African country.
Have you ever wondered why they're so ridiculous? Why they're so poorly written? If they've been doing it so long, they must know how to make it believable enough to catch more people right? Well there's a reason for why the scams are so… bad.
Scammers need to throw a LOT of feelers out before they can catch a prey. If they make the scam sound too realistic, they might attract more people in the beginning, but as the process goes along, they will lose a lot of them. By making it ridiculous from the beginning, they ensure that the people that DO respond are way more likely to fall for the whole thing and actually send them money. Basically they don't wanna waste the time with people who will be smart enough to figure out it's a scam before it's too late.