Detectives last night issued a stark warning after a Reverend almost handed over $16,000 to international money fraudsters, The Royal Gazette has learned.

Police urged people not to hand over any money to people promising them cash and not to enter into strange business deals before they had verified who it was they were dealing with.

The call came after the pastor, who did not wish to be named, almost fell into the clutches of organised criminals operating between Nigeria and Holland.

He was only warned against handing over the cash when his son went to Police with concerns yesterday.

The vicar told The Royal Gazette last night that he had been contacted via the Internet on Christmas Day by someone purporting to be an old, rich Nigerian woman who wished to donate her $10 million fortune to his church before she died of cancer.

In a series of e-mails to and from his home since then, the woman, claiming to be called Deborah Alsabah, said she had been left the cash by her late husband and wanted it to be distributed to the Island's needy when she passed.

She went to such lengths as to send the Reverend documents which claimed he had been made power of attorney to her financial affairs.

And she sent him a fake certificate that claimed the cash had been placed in a trunk and put into the hands of a security deposit company in Holland.

In order to get the money, she said, the vicar had to travel from Bermuda to Amsterdam later this month and hand over $16,000 to the security company in payment for transporting the trunk from Nigeria to Holland.

The $10 million would then be his to distribute as he saw fit, she said.

The vicar said yesterday that he was so convinced by the promise of cash, that he had already provisionally booked his flights to Amsterdam.

It was only when his son went to the Police yesterday to raise concerns about the deal that he learned he had been duped by highly organised international money fraudsters.

The Reverend said: "The lady said she was dying and that God had instructed her to get in touch with me. "She said she wanted to donate $10 million to us. It seemed unbelievable, but I just thought I could do a lot of good in Bermuda with the money. She kept e-mailing messages to me and she said she had tried to fax information to me. I believed her. But when I got to the last stage, where I had to go to collect the money, I began to have suspicions. I thought if she had so much money, why was she asking me to pay the $16,000?

"I had booked my flights, but thankfully, I had not paid for them. They have been cancelled now. I don't think there was any money involved at all. I think the only money involved was my money."

The vicar warned other unsuspecting people in Bermuda to be on their guard and not to fall prey to cash criminals.

Det Con. David Geraghty, of Bermuda Police's Financial Investigations Unit, said the Reverend was not the only person to be fooled by international cash scams. He said a resident on the Island was conned out of almost $200,000 in a similar case at the end of last year, and somebody else in Bermuda had previously lost $450,000.

And he said there was no doubt that the pastor's personal safety could have been in danger if he had travelled to Holland and gone through with the deal.

The detective said other unsuspecting victims around the world had been lulled into almost identical scams, but had been stabbed, and even killed, in the process. He said: "There is no doubt that this man would have lost his money and maybe even been hurt if he had gone to Amsterdam, as directed by this woman. They would have threatened him physically, or maybe attacked him.

"Fortunately, in this case, the pastor lost no money and came to us with concerns before it was too late. But there have been other cases in Bermuda where people have not been so lucky. They have lost a lot of money.

"We want to warn people about these scams. Many of them seem to originate from Nigeria, but they can be operated from anywhere in the world. This is only one example. There are many ways that conmen around the world try to get cash out of people, and, quite often they do it by promising a lot of money, even millions. Quite often they give non-identifiable telephone numbers and only e-mail addresses, and it can be difficult to trace them. The best way to combat these scam artists is to avoid them altogether.

"If a deal sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. If people are offered money or have concerns, they should get in touch with the Police."

The FIU can be contacted at Police headquarters on 295-0011.