To further add to this: there are quite a few gangs here in euroland who are successfully scamming older citizens with nothing but randomly calling them up, pretending to be a grandchild in trouble and in desperate need of some money and then that "grandkid" sends over a friend to collect the money. They are taking literally thousands from the elderly that way, you keep reading about it in the papers.

So I can see how these emails seem totally real and threatening to the average computer-illiterate who sells something for the first time ever. Remember, good scams are about that initial shock, that initial mental blow you deal on your victim to completely catch them off-guard and disable their logical thinking. Flashing a shiny batch or pretending it is an "emergency" is a very good angle.