Fraud upon Fraud

I'm less sick now, so merely making it to work no longer consumes all of my energy.

I received a scam e-mail today that is interesting in that it is an attempt to use an infamous prior fraud as a hook in attempting to commit a subsequent fraud. It's similar to the "aide or family member of deposed despot trying to smuggle money out of the country" e-mails I've received in the past. But it's timeliness, and that it's an American personality cited in the purported deal, caught my attention.

Here is the message:

 I looked up your contact details and I am contacting you because of the urgency this situation demands.I am Mark Madoff son of Bernie Madoff founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities PLC.

My father is currently involved in a $50 billion Usd swindle with investors and the U.S government has decided to confisticate my family empire worth billions of U.S dollars.

We need your assistance to  help us receive and conceal 45 million Usd ($45,000,000,00)from one of our family offshore accounts as we are currently under pressure from the U.S government to give up all family assets.

For your efforts my family is willing to compensate you with 35% of the total funds. Note also that we have to be careful due to the huge nature of the funds.I will update you with more details as soon as I confirm your commitment to this deal.

Should you be interested please send me your details via email to enable us work on this together.

1:Full Names
2:Occupation:
3:Private Phone Number:
4:Current Residential Address:

Regards
Mark Madoff

Brazen and shameless. You'd have to be an absolute idiot to fall for this, given that you'd be willingly walking into a deal with someone who has given you a proposal based on the claim that they are involved with defrauding tens of billions of dollars from others. Do people really fall for this sort of "trust me, I'm an experienced criminal" type of hooks?