We might laugh and joke about these things, but in all honesty, a lot of people are not as 'clued up' as the likes of us, and do fall into the traps very easily.
I even had one from my bank, or so it said. It was a perfect replica of what my bank would send me, but asking for verification of my password. To the layman, they would have thought no more of it and supplied it. The next thing they would know, their account would be empty.
It is easy for these people to find information about you, and what banks you use, but unless you supply them with the information, they can't usually go any further.
A bona fide request will NEVER ask for passwords or the like. If it does, then it is almost 100% guaranteed to be a scam. So rather than ignoring it, send a copy to whoever the email was supposed to be coming from. They take a very dim view of things like that, and have ways of tracing and bringing the perps to justice. Every bit of information you can pass on to them will take things a little further along the road to getting it stopped.
It is that 'just ignore thing and delete it' that lets them get away with it for so long.
It is a sad fact that such a wonderful thing like the internet is used for illegal purposes, but that is just the way it is. All we can do is try to help to bring it under control ourselves.
Bogs