It’s what salesmen call “qualifying leads” 
huv wrote:
Not much to be gained from that, is there?
I actually think there is. The fraudsters have to spend some time on every “phish” so they want the least amount of “escape” once someone is on the hook.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I’ve seen speculation that this is done on purpose, simply too weed out people who won’t be fooled in the end.
Theoretically, it could be the case, but given the abundance of these e-mails, I’d say it’s much more likely to be due to mere stupidity of the scammer. I also happen to know someone whose pastime is to correspond with African dating and inheritance scammers trying to outdupe them; according to him, they aren’t put off by such obvious fakes as passports issued by a nonexistent country.
