What unbelievable luck: About a week ago, I hit a Lotto number — in Amsterdam, of all places — and won 500,000 euros (or about $600,000 in American money). Just a few days later, I got word that an unidentified relative living abroad had passed away, which gave me a shot at about a $5 million piece of a family inheritance. All told, that’s a windfall of almost $5.6 million realized in less than a week.

Sounds great, except for a couple of minor details: I never bought a lottery ticket in the Netherlands, and I don’t have any relatives living abroad.

Alas, my $600,000 and $5 million bonanzas, which I learned about from email messages sent from overseas, are part of a mushrooming number of online scams, which, according to a spokesman for the FBI, are running amok in America, including in New York City. He estimates the scammers are bilking victims out of roughly $200 million a year.

In many cases, the names of well-known overseas financial institutions are used in connection with these scams in an attempt to give them credibility.

That was precisely the case with one of my bogus e-mail messages, sent by a fellow who identified himself as Grunny Holt and said he is a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland located in London. The scammer’s pitch, which could tempt anybody, involved turning $1,500 into $5 million virtually overnight.

During the bank’s most recent accounting/auditing evaluations, he wrote, he came across an old account being maintained by a foreign client whose name was withheld for security reasons. The writer said the man died in 2001 and had never utilized the account. That account remained dormant because the deceased had secretly deposited 7.5 million in British pound sterling (nearly $14.8 million) in a safe deposit box. Since his death, the message continued, nobody has applied for these funds. Thus, he decided to use the Internet to trace the client’s name in an attempt to locate family members. That search, he said, led him to me.

He explained in his e-mail message that he was in a position to provide me with the necessary documents that would identify me as the true next of kin and to effect the transfer of the funds out of the bank and into my designated bank. For my effort, Mr. Holt wrote, I would receive 35% of the total funds (or about $5 million). He, in turn, would take the rest and retire.

I tried reaching him at the bank to learn more, thinking the entire incident might make for an interesting column on the growing danger of online rip-offs, but I was informed there was no one there by the name of Grunny Holt. So I responded via e-mail, asking him to send me his phone number. He sent a number that turned out to be for a cell phone, not the bank’s number. I rang him up, a friend of his answered, told me he wasn’t there, and said the reason I didn’t reach him at the bank was that I probably dialed the wrong number.

Mr. Holt later returned my call and explained there would be a $1,500 fee — which I would be required to pay in advance — for assisting me in proving my eligibility for the funds and transferring the money,

Why, I wondered, does he need me when he’s empowered on his own to transfer the money? Because, as Mr. Holt explained it in an e-mail message riddled with grammatical errors, the bank has a code of conduct that prohibits him from operating a foreign account.

But taking the money would be illegal; I could run afoul of the law, I told him. No need to worry, he said, noting: “The transaction is absolutely risk free since I work in the bank.”

A lesser fee, only $750, was required to collect my supposed $600,000 in lotto winnings in Amsterdam. In this instance, I spoke to a Peter Hands, who identified himself via e-mail as the “approved processing agent” for the lottery’s coordinator, the Dayzers Luxury Agency, and congratulated me on being one of the 10 lucky winners.

I never bought such a ticket, I told him. “Yes, you did; you just forgot,” he said. “Just fill out the questionnaire, send it to us, and collect your $600,000.” He reminded me several times, though, to send a “$750 fee before I can process your winning ticket.”

Oh, well, it’s not every day I’m out $5.6 million, but thank goodness I saved myself $2,250 by opting out of the two scams. With the number of such scams ballooning, make sure you also say no.

dandordan@aol.com