I'VE had a bit of good fortune this week, and I don't mind telling you, I should soon be in the money.

It's all thanks to some high-up banking chap in the West African republic of Benin who has a business proposition which, as he points out, will be beneficial to both of us.

I'm not sure how much I should tell you, as it's slightly shady, and I don't know who'll be reading this.

But it breaks down a bit like this. This Benin blokey - let's call him, oh I dunno, Dr Bamaga Tukor, for instance - is the director in charge of the auditing and accounting section of Credit Bank Benin, a financial institution so prestigious that it doesn't even need its own website. In fact, it only appears on something called nigerianscams.org, but that didn't list personnel, so I'll just have to take him at his word.

It seems his team were doing their auditing and accounting thing when they came across what he describes as "a very huge" sum of money belonging to some poor (well, maybe that's the wrong word - tragic, perhaps) gent who died with his family and servants in a plane crash in January 2000.

Now this is easy to verify, as there are records proving this incident truly did take place with the loss of 170 passengers and crew.

Even so, the little detail about this being a "festive trip" to Abidjan on the Ivory Coast would have convinced me. I mean to say, no-one's going to make this stuff up, are they?

As Dr Tukor puts it (so eloquently!): "Although personally, I kept this information secret within myself and partners to enable the whole plans and idea be profitable and successful during the time of execution." Well, you can't argue with that.

So, there's $24.1million in US currency sitting unclaimed in this bank account, a sum so "very huge" that Dr Tukor repeats it in word form immediately afterwards.

And where do I come in? Well, as Dr T says: "I got your impressive information through my good friend who works with chamber of commerce on foreign business relations here in Cotonou-Benin, it is him who recommended your person to me to be viable and capable to champion a business of such magnitude without any problem."

Yes, as you can tell, he wants me to pose as next of kin for the dear departed, and thus smuggle the cash out of the impoverished (according to the CIA factbook, at least) African state. And luckily I'm just about broke and greedy enough to put my moral scruples to one side. And so long as the deceased was a balding white man with a big nose I might just get away with calling him Uncle.

See, Dr T has promised me a hefty 30 per cent cut for what basically boils down to just letting him use my bank account to store the money. That's $7.23 million by my reckoning, which should see me through Christmas.

And the best thing is, as Dr T says: "It's 100 per cent risk-free"!

Of course, there's always a danger in giving out your bank details, in case an unscrupulous conman gets hold of them and cleans you out. But Dr T must be okay - he's a banker.

Besides, he doesn't even need me to get the money out; he just wants to retire from the bank without suspicion before flying to the UK with his audit-ing team to pick up their share of the millions. What could be more natural than that?

Anyway, I'd better go. I'm the millionth visitor to some website I accidentally got redirected to and there may be a £100,000 prize at stake. And if that falls through, at least I may already be a winner in a prize draw I got through the regular mail the other day...