Someone I knew, who was in a Mexican prison, has passed away and apparently this person has left me money. The bank called me and gave me details to log into an online bank account where I could see the money in an account with my name on it.
The bank is asking me for money before it will give me the inheritance, is this legal?
Nobody legit will ever ask you for money to give you money. If there is a million dollar inheritance and it costs $1,000 to get the money to you, someone legit will take $1,000 from the inheritance and give $999,000 to you.
I was contacted by a private bank overseas to get my inheritance
Umm, sorry - but no, you weren't.
You were contacted by a scam artist who is banking on your greed outweighing your common sense.
Inheritance & deceased estates don't work that way. The executors of the estate may be able to deduct some of their costs from the estate, but that's done directly and does not get paid by the beneficiaries.
Don't fall for this. You're not going to see any money. You will lose any money you send.
Going by your comments under gnasher's answer, the scam goes something like this: The scammer is, or is associated with, someone who knew the deceased in prison. They found out enough about you from the deceased to get your contact information.
Then, when the deceased died, the scammer used this information to set up an advance-fee scam specifically targeted at you (and probably other people similarly connected to the deceased and/or sharing your first and last names), banking on the extra layer of credibility to get you to fall for it.
If you receive and accept an inheritance, there's 2 things you have to pay:
What's common to both is they only apply after you received the assets of the inheritance, and neither is owed to the executor.
If you are worried about getting bad advice on the internet, and are concerned that the basic rules may not apply overseas, you can always contact the local embassy to ask for specific unusual rules regarding international inheritance (e.g. the US embassy in Nigeria, if you're from the US and the overseas "bank" is from Nigeria).
