I think this is the paper that originated this theory that Nigerian scammers set out a deliberately bad "offer" in order to increase their signal to noise ratio. I believe a lot of people have cited this paper as evidence that this is happening.

It seems plausible, but the paper doesn't present any evidence that this is what the scammers were actually doing; it's just a mathematical analysis that such a strategy would be useful.

It also seems conceivable that this paper has become so well known that scammers are now using it as a guide to what strategy to adopt.