A Louisiana man was arrested in connection with the “Nigerian prince” scheme that has scammed people out of thousands of dollars, police announced Thursday.

After an 18-month investigation, Slidell police arrested 67-year-old Michael Neu on 269 counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, after he helped scam people out of thousands of dollars as a middleman in one of the well-known “Nigerian prince” internet scams, a Slidell police spokesman said in a news release Thursday.

Police say Neu was the “middle man” to an e-mail scam, where someone posing as a Nigerian prince claims the victim is the beneficiary in a will and set to inherit millions of dollars. They then ask for your personal financial information to prove that you are the beneficiary and to speed up the transfer of your alleged inheritance.

Neu is suspected of being a middleman who participated in hundreds of financial transactions that conned money from victims across the United States. Some of the money obtained by Neu was subsequently wired to co-conspirators in Nigeria.

The investigation is ongoing, but police said it is difficult because many leads point to suspects who live outside of the United States.