This is a varient on the 419 fraud, also known as the Spanish prisoner fraud that has been going on as far back as the 16th century ( if the MET site
is to be believed).
419 is the Nigerian criminal code for the advanced fee fraudand and covers a broad family of scams from the job scam, romance scam, Greetings from the
Prince of Nigeria or ( my own personal favourite) THE HITMAN
A slight word of warning to the OP, I would imagine that the Police would be able to do very little about your case but at least you recorded it. I
would also leave it at that as they have your address. You don't interest them anymore as you aren't going to give them any money but if you try to
rock the boat, who knows...they are criminals, after all.
Another wee warning is that they might try to contact you again, maybe to tell you that they have been given a training grant and now only require
£1000 from you. In that case, just play along, thank them but tell them you have another job lined up.
If anyone reading feels a bit mad about this they should do a google search for 419. It will bring up a host of pages dedicated to informing people
about this crime.
More importantly, it can also lead to a rather fun, worthwhile and addictive hobby...scambaiting. You would also be doing the community a valuable,
unpaid service by taking up the scammers time, thus keeping the desperate intact with their money ( I wouldn't call them stupid, there have been
cases of Doctors, lawyers etc getting caught out with this scam).
The idea of the game is to set up an anonymous email addy and play along with the scammers when they get in contact with you. Seed your fake address
on some old style messageboards and watch the offers of billions flooding into your inbox.
After this , get in contact ( with the fake ID) and follow their intructions. It's up to you how you play it...straight or silly.
There are no rules with scambaiting except maybe the obvious...
Stay safe...they are criminals, after all.
Don't do anything illegal ( like asking THEM for money, very tempting, but likely illegal).
All you have to do is open an untracable email account like gmail and you are on your way.
I can't hope to do any justice to the subject in one post, but it may well appeal to the more twisted ATS members out there, so like I said, just
type 419 into google.