Well, I thought I had hit an all-time low when I inadvertently robbed my Nigerian friend of hundreds of millions of dollars and then blew it by giving it away to people. (See my story from last week.) But things just went downhill.

Due to a bad zip code, one of the ten dollar bills I sent to someone came back to me. I had just ten dollars left of what was once a fortune. What would I do with it?

Then I got an email from a nice young woman named Pam5834293@aol.com. She said that she had made thousands of dollars with this special email -- all you do is put your name on a list and send a dollar to each of the ten people on the top of the list. Then you send the email to all of your friends.

It seemed like a good investment. And it might make me a new friend. So, I sent one dollar to everyone on the list and then sent the email to the millions of people in my address book. Weeks went by and I heard nothing. My thoughts kept returning to my Nigerian friend. I was sad and alone.

Then one day I got a dollar. And then another. I guessed that it was starting to work. The next day I got sixty bucks. The day after? $46,000. Within a week I was pulling down a quarter million a day.

But I wasn't foolhardy this time! I knew just what to do. My Nigerian friend was in trouble; last I'd seen he was on his knees weeping on CNN. I put every penny in the bank. One hundred million ... two hundred million ... soon I had all $365 million that I owed my friend! It was time to repair my lost soul-brotherhood. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to contact him. He could be anywhere.

I had no other choice. I invested in a spam email service and sent email to tens of millions of people. "Dear Friend" I wrote. "I am looking for a long-lost Nigerian pal who had lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to strife within his country. Are you my lost Nigerian friend? If so, send me your bank account information and I will deposit the money into it right away. Thank you!"

Within two days flak-jacketed federal agents busted open my door and carried me off in a steel van for fraud.