When prosecutors in the Bernie Madoff trial presented the court with 96 pages of emails they claimed were from Madoff’s victims, one of them seemed oddly familar, and not in a good way. Here’s the email they found on page 36:

“My name is (redacted), but my origin is from Republic of Congo. I have an inherited fund I want to invest in business in your country with a help of a local. …If you can assist, I am willing to give you 10% of the funds that is $3.5 million,” reads the apparent scam letter contained on page 36 of the 96-page filing. A copy of the filing was posted online by MSNBC.

That’s right, prosecutors included a Nigerian scam email along with the ones from Madoff’s victims. A scam within a scam. Makes you wonder just how carefully prosecutors actually looked at the emails as they were gathering them.  Obviously it wasn’t near careful enough! The U.S. Attorney’s Office responsible for the case has so far not had any comment on the issue, and whether the blunder may harm the case has yet to be seen, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the judge to question the legitmacy of the other emails included with the scam one.