Justice Secretary Jack Straw has been targeted by Nigerian internet fraudsters. Skip related content

Requests for money were sent by email to hundreds of the Blackburn MP's contacts, claiming that he had lost his wallet while on charity work in Africa and needed 3,000 US dollars to get home.

Among those receiving the bogus pleas for help were Ministry of Justice officials, Labour Party members, constituents and council bosses. One constituent is believed to have replied to the email, but nobody offered any money.

Mr Straw told his local newspaper, the Lancashire Telegraph, that the emails were sent to a "significant number of people" in his email address book.

But he said there were no security issues relating to his Cabinet post as the attempted fraud related to addresses stored in his Blackburn email account rather than a ministerial one.

It is understood that the problems began on Thursday last week, when Mr Straw's office responded to a message saying that its email account would be suspended unless a reply was sent.

Soon afterwards, constituents began to phone the office asking about an email they had received which said Mr Straw was visiting Nigerian capital Lagos for a project called Empowering Youth to Fight Racism.

Mr Straw said: "I started getting phone calls from various constituents asking if I was really in Nigeria needing 3,000 dollars. It was an issue for constituents, not the Government. We are checking all that and I am assured there's no evidence that confidentiality of constituents was affected."

As Home Secretary, Mr Straw set up the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit to crack down on internet hackers in 2001. He said: "The internet is wonderful in many ways, but these gangs put a lot of effort in because they make money from it. In a lot of cases they do get people to cough up. But I think it was so obviously ridiculous that I could go off trekking in Africa and I would lose my wallet."

The Hotmail account was later suspended by Microsoft officials.

I got an identical email "from" Bangkok journo S Tsow, begging for money as he was trapped in darkest Nigeria without funds.

To his everlasting embarrassment, so did everyone else in his email address book after he foolishly sent his details off.

Requests for money were sent by email to hundreds of the Blackburn MP's contacts, claiming that he had lost his wallet while on charity work in Africa and needed 3,000 US dollars to get home.

To which they all replied "<deleted> off, keep him".