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It's like the stuff you see on 419 Eater where they convince the scammers to send in photos of themselves looking stupid.

Anyone with a half a clue would have twigged to it...The request is so clearly useless.

Um, I'm sure I won't be the only one to ask this. But how in the hell does this prove that you are not the FBI, Secret Service, Police or whoever? Even if he was on campus at the time, I'm sure any authority that you'd want to fear could get to wherever they needed to be to take that picture in the same day that he asks for it.

In case you are wondering, what they are doing is a variant of the 419 eater technique. They had no intent of following through, but they had every intent of making the guy look like a fool as they strung him along.

because it's fictional, you trektard

No, it also exists in reality.

I'm surprised we haven't started seeing vigilantes tracking down hackers and spammers. When governments can't handle things, the mob takes over.

Seriously though, hackers are just misguided. Spammers however....

take a look at http://www.419eater.com/ for more of that sort of thing

...the families have asked that donations be made to The Holy Church of The Order of The Red Breast.

The commodore 64 disks were all 5 1/4.

Perhaps he is using one of these: http://forum.419eater.com/john_boko.htm (see 2nd half of scam). That would really confuse the investigators.

You really have to post the whole exchange somewhere. In http://www.419eater.com/, for instance.

$ telnet gmail.cm smtp
Trying 72.51.27.58...
Connected to gmail.cm (72.51.27.58).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 blackhole.gdei.com

Remember, folks, racism is A-OK if it's trying to prevent terrorism or 419 scams

if a black, asian, hispanic, or white person has committed a serious crime, people should be aware of it. Race can narrow down suspects and I don't see it as "racial profiling" or any other kind of PC bullshit.

when a large portion of scams are coming out of nigeria or a large amount of terrorist groups are of a certain race, people should be aware.

Check out http://www.419eater.com/ and look through their gallery. Tell me how many of them are of african descent.

From the blurb:

Lebanese authorities captured an Al Qaeda member who confessed to the plot, and stated that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had pledged financial and other support for the operation.

One counter-terrorism source told the Daily News it was doubtful a plot to blow it up would be feasible, saying huge amounts of explosives and a detailed knowledge of blast effect would be necessary.

Ok, so all I have to do is hang out in chatrooms until I find some Al Qaeda guy and tell him some off-the-wall plan for a plot. And they'll fund me!

Old and busted, 419 scam baiting. New hotness: Al Qaeda scam baiting.

First one to get a picture of some Al Qaeda guy holding up a sign that says "I traded my 72 virgins for a pulled pork sandwich" wins.

There are some really really greedy and stupid people out there.

Letters come in hundreds of different formats. There are the well-known next-of-kin letters, the orphan scams, repentant dying sinner needs help giving fortune away to charity, tsunami victim donation appeals, fake cheque scams, wash-wash, anti-scam scams (been a victim of 419 crime? We'll get your money back for you - at a price!) and more.

More importantly: you know it's unwise and dangerous to respond to 419 mails. Are you sure your mother or cousin is aware of the danger? This is a good time to educate your family how these scammers work. Read The Ethics of Scambaiting as a brief introduction to the subject.

(I'm a 419eater member, so I'm posting as AC.)

I love the legs he photoshops into crashed planes and other vehicles. Naked with only sneakers and no socks. How can the 419 scammers ever believe something like that?

WARNING violence and blood

http://www.419eater.com/images/reelgud.jpg
http://www.419eater.com/images/bread_and_wine_cras h.jpg

I love the legs he photoshops into crashed planes and other vehicles. Naked with only sneakers and no socks. How can the 419 scammers ever believe something like that?

WARNING violence and blood

http://www.419eater.com/images/reelgud.jpg
http://www.419eater.com/images/bread_and_wine_cras h.jpg

For more examples of this, people at 419Eater and scamorama have been reverse scamming 419ers for years now. Oh and then there's my sig.

Why does the story link to a news article about the blog perpetrating this anti-419 caper? The 419eater blog itself is here:

http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm

Wood carving scam:
http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm

and another great one where he gets the scammer to tattoo himself:
http://www.419eater.com/html/okorie.htm

Wood carving scam:
http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm

and another great one where he gets the scammer to tattoo himself:
http://www.419eater.com/html/okorie.htm

I like messing with the Phishers, by leaving usernames like "ScrewYouBastards" with passwords like "IHopeYouDie". On a related note, ever seen 419Eater.com? They mess with the Nigerian 419 spammers with the theory that, by wasting their time, thats one less person they can scam.

I've spent 3 years on eBay's help forums, and in that time I've stopped a few shillers, and helped to warn a few clueless individuals of phishing scams, and worse. eBay does jack squat, and they have about 1 person with a handful of people officially dealing with fraud. The rest is automated and farmed out to India where they send form letters in reply and toss the mountains of reports of fraud to the side.

If you want something done on the WWW, you have to do it yourself. It's the Wild Wild West.

It's why there are sites like http://419eater.com/ , people get to "play" detective.

http://www.419eater.com/
There are entire groups of civilians devoted to bringing down criminals and other IT security nightmares. The guys and gals at 419Eater do a better job than eBay in policing fake escrow sites, and taking them down [legally most times I'd hope].

If you're Nigerian and have enough time on your hands you can both fight scammers and have fun if you join the so called "scambaiters" at www.419eater.com. In case you don't know what "scambaiting" is, I'll explain it briefly: The idea is to respond to the scam mails and pretend that you've fallen for it but then invent lots of time-consuming things for the scammers to do - such as going to an airport far away from where they are to meet you, provide lots of documentation about the money, fill out forms so that you can "trust them", tell them that you've sent the money and they should go to Western Union to pick it up and so on (the greedy scammers fall for almost anything so I sometimes wonder how such stupid people manage to scam anybody). That way the baiters waste the time of scammers that thus get less time for real victims and the profit ratio for them goes down too (money received from scams / time spent in an Internet cafe and doing whatever the baiters ask for). Many scambaiters publish the results of such scammer timewasters (or "baits" as they call them) and they are incredibly funny - check out the trophy room (they call the ridiculous pictures that they get scammers to take "trophies") on the site or listen to some recorded phone calls in the media forum (a scammer that realizes that he's been had and yells death threats in the telephone and hears laughter in return is incredibly funny - I especially recommend the calls in this bait).

The baiters appreciate Nigerians that join the fight very much since they have local knowledge and can thus pull off even better baits (they can really convince the scammers that they have gotten their victim to travel to Nigeria). One Nigerian baiter (Double-O) is absolutely incredible since he sometimes calls some of the scammers and pretendeds to be a fellow scammer and speaks Igbo and can thus convince them of almost anything (he got some scammers to drive eight hours to Ghana and back to meet a "victim"). So if you have the time you can become a very good baiter and thus fight back, have fun and get many fans at 419eater!

If you're Nigerian and have enough time on your hands you can both fight scammers and have fun if you join the so called "scambaiters" at www.419eater.com. In case you don't know what "scambaiting" is, I'll explain it briefly: The idea is to respond to the scam mails and pretend that you've fallen for it but then invent lots of time-consuming things for the scammers to do - such as going to an airport far away from where they are to meet you, provide lots of documentation about the money, fill out forms so that you can "trust them", tell them that you've sent the money and they should go to Western Union to pick it up and so on (the greedy scammers fall for almost anything so I sometimes wonder how such stupid people manage to scam anybody). That way the baiters waste the time of scammers that thus get less time for real victims and the profit ratio for them goes down too (money received from scams / time spent in an Internet cafe and doing whatever the baiters ask for). Many scambaiters publish the results of such scammer timewasters (or "baits" as they call them) and they are incredibly funny - check out the trophy room (they call the ridiculous pictures that they get scammers to take "trophies") on the site or listen to some recorded phone calls in the media forum (a scammer that realizes that he's been had and yells death threats in the telephone and hears laughter in return is incredibly funny - I especially recommend the calls in this bait).

The baiters appreciate Nigerians that join the fight very much since they have local knowledge and can thus pull off even better baits (they can really convince the scammers that they have gotten their victim to travel to Nigeria). One Nigerian baiter (Double-O) is absolutely incredible since he sometimes calls some of the scammers and pretendeds to be a fellow scammer and speaks Igbo and can thus convince them of almost anything (he got some scammers to drive eight hours to Ghana and back to meet a "victim"). So if you have the time you can become a very good baiter and thus fight back, have fun and get many fans at 419eater!

Your government needs to start policing the criminals that give your country a bad name. If they were to hook up with the people at http://www.419eater.com/ I'm sure they could come up with a way for the 419eater guys to trick the scammer into turning themselves in to the police there.

Regardless of the specifics, either the country must start policing itself, or you have to pull a Chalabi and convince Bush to come liberate you from the scammers instead. You probably don't want that. Though I hear that you do have a lot of oil there, being the largest oil producer in all of Africa.

http://www.419eater.com/

But the scammers aren't the poor people living in those conditions! On the contrary, they're the rich and educated Nigerians -- if they weren't, they wouldn't have the knowledge and resources to perpetrate the scams (e.g. speaking English and having enough money for Internet access). See Section 5 of this for details.

FORUM TOPIC

It's an incredibly catchy song too. Here are the lyrics, for those of us unable to play wma files:

Eater, Eater we love you

Eater, Eater yes we do

With the modalities of bread

We will decorate our head

Eater, Eater we love you

Eater, Eater yes we do
 
Don't bother searching the thread for a link to an mp3 version either. It seems that 419eater is visited only by Windows victims.

The song is definitely worth a reboot if you're a dual booter though, and you'd be surprised how many mp3 players support wma, so give it a look.

http://www.419eater.com/
 
An informational website that helps you scam the scammers.

forum topic

another forum topic

It goes on and on. A baiter claims that the fictional contact was killed in some way - the scammer immediately starts negotiating for the bereaved to get him the money.

Your post is certainly interesting, and a better contribution than some of the random conjecture of this topic, but please, wrong * 2 != right.

Now I'm bordering on flaming here, which wouldn't be fair, but anyway: the poverty in favelas in Brazilian cities like Rio and Sao Paulo is similarly shocking (as in similar to your rubbing-a-sore-on-the-wall anecdote), yet these people don't spend their time scamming people on the internet. I've wondered for a while what the difference might be, and I think it is just that someone came up with this idea in Nigeria, it gained a foothold among assholes, and from there it grew, due to poverty. It's not nice for me to think that the only difference between Brazil and Nigeria is that the Nigerians thought of it first, but it seems possible (another possible factor would be that there are far richer people in Brasil, making internet cafe prices too high for the favelados). So anyway, my point is that poverty is a big factor in the existence of 419 scamming, but more than anything else it's just that it happened to spring into existence in that particular country, not that there is *no* other option

forum topic

another forum topic

It goes on and on. A baiter claims that the fictional contact was killed in some way - the scammer immediately starts negotiating for the bereaved to get him the money.

Your post is certainly interesting, and a better contribution than some of the random conjecture of this topic, but please, wrong * 2 != right.

Now I'm bordering on flaming here, which wouldn't be fair, but anyway: the poverty in favelas in Brazilian cities like Rio and Sao Paulo is similarly shocking (as in similar to your rubbing-a-sore-on-the-wall anecdote), yet these people don't spend their time scamming people on the internet. I've wondered for a while what the difference might be, and I think it is just that someone came up with this idea in Nigeria, it gained a foothold among assholes, and from there it grew, due to poverty. It's not nice for me to think that the only difference between Brazil and Nigeria is that the Nigerians thought of it first, but it seems possible (another possible factor would be that there are far richer people in Brasil, making internet cafe prices too high for the favelados). So anyway, my point is that poverty is a big factor in the existence of 419 scamming, but more than anything else it's just that it happened to spring into existence in that particular country, not that there is *no* other option

...respond immediately

from The Ethics of Scambaiting

Numerous victims of scammers have committed suicide or been murdered due to these scams. One particularly nasty type of scam involves getting a victim to travel to the scammers country, usually Nigeria, South Africa or to Amsterdam, with large amounts of cash to 'finalize the transaction'. The victim is then kidnapped, often beaten and tortured and sometimes killed.

This is not a rare event. It has happened numerous times. At the time of writing this FAQ the latest known victim was a 29 year old Greek man, George Makronalli, who traveled to South Africa as part of a 419 scam. He was then kidnapped and killed when his family refused to pay the ransom. A day later, police found George's body in Durban. Both his legs and arms were broken and he had been set alight - probably while he was still alive.

From: XXX XXX Jennings
To: Amanda Fairheart-Smythe
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 12:09:16 -0600 (Central Standard Time)

Dear Amanda Fairheart-Smythe,

I wish I had received this email over 3 years ago. This man has stolen all that I had saved and money that I borrowed. I heard from his Mother (?) telling me a sad story that she was dying from Aids and wanted me to take her children as my own when she died. She had set up an Inheritance account and put it in my name. How stupid could I have been? What I sent was to cover legal fees, legal documents, etc... The money was never sent here. I have heard in the last couple of days from the bank and have found out that Kwesi Bandermann and others are thieves. Why did it take over 3 years to find this out? I would never put your informants life in danger. My life is in danger now as well as my family. I have received threats this week. I am so afraid now and don't know what to do. How did you know that Kwesi Bandermann was expected to arrive here by plane? He did not arrive and I pray to God he doesn't. How did you get this email address? Only 2 people had it. It was Mr. Richard Meddings and Kwesi Bandermann. I can tell you the whole story if you need it.

Sincerely,
XXX XXX Jennings

...microsoft is running a SPAMFILTER on their abuse@hotmail.com account!
that's right. if your complaint isn't bounced with:
[snip]
then your complaints get bounced with:
[snip]

instead of forwarding it to abuse@msn or abuse@hotmail, send it to abuse@[msn_personal_address] Ie: abuse@abachafamily.org

doing that is supposed to work, but doesnt necessarily mean it will 100% of the time, after all we're talking about Microsoft...

can read more about killing MSN Personal Addresses here: http://www.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3735 8

In reality, it's win-win for the Nigerian Government and Micro$oft.

Both the Nigerian Government and Micro$oft improve their images by being "seen" to be taking steps the problem, while in fact doing next to nothing. People will still get scammed as before - business as usual.

Training Nigerian government employees by Micro$oft might in fact give them additional skills to scam more effectively. The reasons for scamming are culturally much deeper than a quick "technological fix".

What can you really do about the problem?

Go to http://www.419eater.com/ , have fun and learn how to bait and genuinely burn scumbag 419 criminals safely.

Posted as AC in the interests of not Karma Whoring.

http://419eater.com/

Has info about scambaiters, kind of a funny effort. But the question must be asked, do 2 wrongs make a right?
article links from last year:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3887493.st m
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/13/164 2255&tid=133&tid=111

Ever seen this? *g*

http://www.419eater.com/

I for one appreciate the foreign contribution to the internet. I mean just look what Nigeria gave us... a whole Internet sub culture where serious criminals will put loaves of bread on their head. Not to mention the serious amount of network security tests performed by the Chinese, Russians, and eastern Europeans. And how can we forget all those infected Windows machines which act as good little DDoS drones and are found all across asia.

Yup, the Internet has massively dwarfed what the US brought to the table.

Dear mister Hrm:

May I briefly introduce myself to you.

I am hajia Mariam Abacha, the wife of the late Nigerian Head of State, General Sani Abacha who died on the 8th of June,1998. Before his death, he had been awarded with Micro$oft a sum of 7 million dollairs US. If you could please email your bank account details...

(Okay, kidding, kidding!)

For real fun with spammers/scammers visit http://www.419eater.com/

I went to this website and browsed around. In particular I read some of the letters/reports listed on this page: http://www.419eater.com/html/letters.htm

It seems to me the top section is reports done by the website owner as opposed to the bottom section of letters "submissions from fellow scambaiters"

I thought it was pretty interesting that this guy actually scams the scammers, according to notations in big red bold letters he's taken people who wrote to him for over $1200 and I'm sure he's hoping that number climbs as he eagerly awaits more email of marks to flood into him. I assume (since he runs an "anti-scam" website that he's never himself been scammed out of money.

That's really cool. I'm hoping maybe this guy can expand his business, maybe going out on the streets at night and robbing people at gunpoint who approach him that he might think are suspicious

But not all of Nigeria's 419 scammers are at all intelligent. http://www.419eater.com/html/hall_of_shame.htm/

An individual or company receives a letter or fax from an alleged "official" representing a foreign government or agency.

An offer is made to transfer millions of dollars in "over invoiced contract" funds into your personal bank account.

You are encouraged to travel overseas to complete the transaction.

You are requested to provide blank company letterhead forms, banking account information, telephone/fax numbers.

You receive numerous documents with official looking stamps, seals and logo testifying to the authenticity of the proposal.

Eventually you must provide up-front or advance fees for various taxes, attorney fees, transaction fees or bribes.

Other forms of 4-1-9 schemes include: c.o.d. of goods or services, real estate ventures, purchases of crude oil at reduced prices, beneficiary of a will, recipient of an award and paper currency conversion.

Considering what it requires one to do (lots of illegal stuff), anyone suckered into one of these probably deserves to be taken.

http://www.419eater.com/ is a nice place to see the successful story against 419 scammers

A Ron Popeil hat? A fish-hat?

Look here. More posters at the propaganda page

Look here. More posters at the propaganda page

Visit http://www.419eater.com/ for a good laugh at these scammers being scammed!

It's not strictly Nigeria. However, according to 419eater.com, it it somewhat cultural - see question 5, forward search for "Old Coaster".

Maybe you should read item 5 ("But the scammers are only trying to get ahead & feed their families. If the West hadn't raped their country of its wealth they wouldn't have to do this") on http://www.419eater.com/html/ethics.htm .

I agree that scambaiting doesn't really lead anywhere and probably just endangers you, but I don't exactly feel compassion for the scammers, either. They're criminals who're only acting out of greed.

It looks like this one had a dream of being a great professional wrestler, only to accidently send a letter to one of those folks at 419eater.

http://members.419eater.com/~homerjfong/wrestlersc ammer.zip
http://community.webshots.com/album/397026494naLUk e