Greetings from a friend overseas!

How can anybody be that dumb? I’m referring to the ol’ Nigerian investment scam that clogs your incoming e-mail every morning?

Who can actually be taken in by the oddly worded and patently phony requests to share millions of dollars … if you will only send back your bank account identification, Social Security number and a few other intensely personal pieces of information.

Incredibly, of course, it happens all the time. Somebody who’s either greedy or stupid — or both, usually — takes the bait and sends thousands of dollars overseas.

The latest sucker is, of all people, the treasurer of Alcona County, Michigan, one Thomas Katona according to the Associated Press

You would think that a person in that job would have enough sense to spot that hoax a mile away. Shoot, he’s even an accountant on the side.

It wasn’t enough. He lost $72,500 of his own money. His own bank even tried to warn him that he was stepping off a cliff, but he wouldn’t listen.

The bigger problem, however, is that he also apparently forked over $1.2 million of the taxpayers’ money. We’re talking eight separate wire transfers over a two-month period.

“You have to wonder how he could get involved in such a thing,” said Sheriff Doug Ellinger.

Good question, Doug. But why did voters keep electing Katona even though in 1998 he pleaded guilty to falsifying documents for his accounting clients?

I hate to sound like a nitpicking hairsplitter, but the words “fraud” and “county treasurer” really shouldn’t be in the same sentence.

Oh well, live and learn.

Before he was caught, Katona supposedly was telling people “that his train was coming in and he was going to be retiring very soon.”

Mr. K, the train was headed your way, but you were standing on the tracks and about to get flattened.

I wonder what kind of retirement programs are available in the Michigan Department of Corrections?