Am I about to be scammed?

You're being set up to be an accomplice

Imagine you are a criminal. You know how to hack American bank accounts or do fake transactions on eBay... but you don't know how to to get the ill-gotten-gains out, given Americans' well-managed banking controls.

Wouldn't it be great if you had an American working with you, who would receive your stolen money, not ask any questions, and forward it on to you via an untraceable method? Match made in heaven, you hack/steal, they forward the money.

But the problem is, nobody would willingly sign up for that job, because the stolen money would trace straight back to them. "FBI! Open up!" Couldn't pay them enough to do that.

But what if you could trick them? Make them think you're legit, make them think this is normal.

.... and now you know what that's about.

This looks like a classic Advanced Fee Fraud.

This fraud works like this: Someone tells you they have a lot of money for you which you deserve for [reasons] but before they can send it to you, you first have to send them some money for [reasons].

But that money for you doesn't exist. If you send them the money they ask for, they will invent new reasons why you need to send them even more money. They will keep doing that until you realize you are being scammed.

How do you know that you didn't really win a lottery or inherited money from your great-great-aunt in Nigeria? When someone actually has money for you, but sending it to you involves some transfer fee, tax or whatever, they would just take that fee from the money they were about to send to you. Asking you for an advanced fee would just be unnecessarily complicated. So when someone does that, you know you are being scammed.