The UK Supreme Court has become the victim of on-line fraudsters. Scammers have been sending out emails claiming to be from the court and requesting payments - a variant on the notorious Nigerian 419 scam.

All this may be inferred from a short announcement on the court's website yesterday:

Orders made by the Supreme Court are only sent to the parties to proceedings before the Court, and will bear the court's seal and logo. They are not sent by email and will not require the making of a financial payment in return for a larger sum. If you are not party to proceedings in the Supreme Court and receive an apparent court order, or are unsure of the validity of any apparent order you receive, please contact the Registry for advice.

But it's not all bad news for the court, which has struggled to impress itself on the public consciousness since it opened for business almost a year ago. The scammers must think that enough people believe that the court itself exists for it to be worth their while to impersonate it. Unless they think that the sort of people who believe there's a supreme court in Britain will believe anything.