This type of spam is likely familiar to anyone who has been using email since the 90s or 2000s. Sometimes called “Nigerian prince” emails as that was the purported message sender for many years, this type of spam promises a financial reward if you first provide a cash advance. The sender typically indicates that this cash advance is some sort of processing fee or earnest money to unlock the larger sum, but once you pay, they disappear. To make it more personal, a similar type of scam involves the sender pretending to be a family member that is in trouble and needs money, but if you pay, unfortunately the outcome is the same.