Same Rainbow, no Gold

Six or seven times a day, for at least the last six years, I have received various ridiculous "help me move my fortune from my third-world country" email letters. How can the same transparent tactics be employed more than 12,000 times unless there are legions of moron recipients who actually respond to such letters? How difficult can it be for full-faculty recipients to figure out that these bogus claims are perpetrated by career criminals in the world's cyber cafes where their thievery is largely untraceable? Did I miss an important announcement -- is the general level of intelligence dropping to new lows?