Most of the recent ones I've had through are concerning winning the lottery and asking for various details. Also the mainly successful ones are one craigslist of offering to buy an item from someone and then sending a fake cheque stating more than the deal of the item..they even have an extra excuse for this to pay an extra for shipping costs..they then asking them to cash the cheque in and draw out the remaining cash to wire back to them...because they more or less have to be cashed straight away it's the perfect excuse.
Alot of them have gotten smarter with their phishing e-mails for online bank accounts as well, they use html and images so that keywords that set the spam filter off won't work.
The fact is no matter what variation of the scam they're doing over e-mail or craigslist there are millions of people being sent this e-mail and millions of people selling shit on craigslist, a few people out those million are bound to fall for it.
The excuse I'd use on craigslist if questioned about western union would be because of the security measures of having to have a secret question and needing ID for over $1000, and that the message on craigslist warning about money wiring is mainly aiming on moneygram because it was known to have been used by nigerian scammers and has no security measures; where as western union is quick and secure(if I was that way inclined
). That's how most others do it as well. The more security measures someone thinks they have then the more likely they are to take the bait.
Many have started using order forms as well and posting them through peoples doors...obviously all details go straight back to the scammer.
There's so many variations of the scam and new ones every day.
The reason the ones who are actually working in nigeria make so much is because they have government in on the scam and if they can get the victim over to nigeria they'll bribe customs to let the person through without a visa (which is illegal for the victim) and they'll leech them dry or maybe even rob and kill them.
They're amongst my favourite scams although the scammers themselves are looked down on by other well known scammers such as the chinese, russian and turks; but to be honest the nigerians don't give a fuck.