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The quarter in my pocket says, "In God We Trust." I'll go that far, but these are crisis times for trusting.

And that's a major issue with me because I have had a trust deficit ever since my mother's assurances that eating the crust of my slice of rye bread would make my hair curly. Look at me -- would you trust my mother? My hair is as straight as the edge of a postcard. By the way, she also answered my childhood request to have tea like the grownups drank, with something she called "white tea." I discovered later that this was warm milk with sugar in it. Snookered again.

But you have to learn to trust some people, and they have to be able to trust you. Otherwise nothing works. The problem is that the world buffets you with reasons not to trust anyone outside your personal circle of cleared people. Of course, in these trust issues, you have to differentiate between incompetence, which is rampant in our society, and intent to deceive... which is also rampant in our society.

All of this talk about trust and deception leads me to tell you about a current issue. I have not even told my wife this, yet, but I have just today refused a gift of over $10 million. Ten million! That's three zero's short of bank bailout territory, but still represents a lot of Starbucks lattes.

This offer of cash came in the form of an email from Nigeria, describing complex situations involving unclaimed inheritances, uncollected lottery winnings, and a dormant bank account about to become the property of the Chinese government in Hong Kong if I don't claim it first. Yes, me.

The email greeted me with "Dearest Friend." I thought, hmmn, should I follow this up? My friends said, "Wait, this is an obvious scam! Why would some lawyer, Nigerian or otherwise, want to give you 10 million bucks?" I didn't much care for their emphasis on the "you," with an implicit meaning of "a nobody like you," but I decided to carry on. Maybe this was legit.

The plea I received -- and in the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up -- was from a barrister I will call O.H. (Not his real fake initials.) He is a "Law Councellor" and Notary Public in Apapa, Lagos, Nigeria. O.H. gives his email address at yahoo.ca, which places him in Canada, not Nigeria. OK, this throws a bit of chilly water on O.H.'s legitimacy, but it's not a deal-breaker. Maybe there's a cheap weekly flight from Toronto to Apapa. Is there really a place called Apapa? Yes -- it's a port at the city of Lagos.

The actual message from Barrister O.H. states that he is the Personal Attorney to a late expatriate American national, an Engineer. O.H. said he was unsuccessful in locating any of the Engineer's relatives, hence he contacted me. Yes, me. He noted that God works in mysterious ways, and that he (O.H., not God) picked me to help get this fund for ourselves before it gets confiscated. I'm not sure that God, in his un-mysterious way, would approve, but I decided to go on.

Seems there was $10.5 million in the Engineer's account and O.H. wanted to have my consent to present me as the legitimate inheritor so that we can share the money 45-45 with 10 percent going to help the poor and needy per the Engineer's will. All O.H. requires of me is my sincerity and honesty. No problem! Oh, he also wants my full legal name, address, Social Security Number, date of birth, and my bank account number so he can deposit my share of the money. That all seemed reasonable.

But then I realized -- darn! -- that I had to turn down the entire offer. I was about to send O.H. the information he required, when I noticed for the first time that he had sent the same "Dearest Friend" email to over 400 alphabetically listed ‘cc' names, and that was only through the E's, when I stopped counting. How sincere did I think that "Dearest Friend" greeting was then? Not very, I can tell you. I have my self-respect.

Still, I have to tell my wife about the prideful decision I made regarding the $10 million, hoping I hadn't made a mistake. But first I will bring in the mail, mainly so I can delay the meeting for a few minutes. Hmm -- phone bill, gas bill, Nordstrom's catalog, some flyers, and a letter addressed to my wife postmarked... Nigeria? From a barrister's office in Lagos? I hold it up to the light. Seems to be the outline of a bank statement in there.

Maybe I'll just shut up about the whole thing and watch her open her mail.

Bernard Jacks is a freelance humor writer who lives in Marlboro.