There’s always someone eager, willing and able to steal your money.

We get so many e-mail requests from Africa seeking help transferring large sums of money that we can’t believe anyone would fall for this scam.

Yet, as we learned last week, good-hearted but naive people do. A Wilton woman lost $3,900 in an Internet scam trying to help what she thought was a missionary group.

That money is long gone and with no hope of getting it back.

The moral is simple: Ignore e-mail solicitations from any person or group that you do not know.

Even then, be wary of any unsolicited requests for personal information. Often, Internet thieves use official-looking corporate and government symbols as a front for their scams.