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I thought this was news for nerds, not Nigerians.

Who said it's not news for Nigerian nerds? Of course there are nerds in Nigeria; otherwise, why would most of the advance fee fraud scams nowadays be perpetrated through Internet e-mail (as seen here)?

If this were real, some parts of Africa would be lit up like a christmas tree.

So why don't you join in with scambaiters over at 419eater.com

Anyone that is fucking stupid enough to fall for a 419 scam deserves to lose their money. It is beyond my comprehension that people can be so dumb. How is it that people have so little common sense that they fall for this stuff?

That is a heartless attitude. From The Ethics of Scambaiting :

...letters come in hundreds of different formats - just check out the Surplus Letters Forum! 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.

Good, well-meaning people get tricked. Consider this woman:

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...

All she wanted to do was adopt some children whose mother had died of AIDS. She was scammed over 3 years and lost vast amounts of money. Greedy? I don't think so.

Further, a single downed fake "bank" costs the scammers about $1200. With LadVampire having removed 300 "banks" from the net, that's $360,000 away from the scammers - plus the revenue from victims that would've been scammed via those banks.

Better yet, let's scam the scammer...

2) Employ teams of people to respond to SPAM (at a government level). SPAM works because they get a low return rate, but the people who do respond actually buy stuff. Thats what keeps it all going. If we made it so that a decent percentage of the replies were time wasters, the average company would suddenly have to employ lots of resources to deal with false responses. In effect, it would spam them. Suddenly its no longer as cheap to advertise this way.

Got Mike. Mo meets a pretty woman is a classic.
Scan-O-Rama
Insolitology
Tastes like gold
Ebola monkey man. Well worth a read, very funny.
Quatloos, The Brad Christensen Exhibit. Check out ROSEMARY KABBAH -- Romancing the Pickle Taco.
and last but not least 419 Eater which has a personal recommendation on the front page.

Enjoy!

419 Eater is one of the funniest sites on the net. Check it out when you need a good laugh.

Check out http://www.419eater.com/ for other people's reverse scam and phishing successes.

That they find another unethical ISP that doesn't mind taking money from thieves(I doubt that they "earned" most of their money legally, they use viruses in order to spread their crap, they use open proxies on compromised machines to hide themselves, etc), will turn a blind eye to illegal activities(i.e. ThePlanet.com ignores reports of fake bank and phishing sites), and the ISP is ok with having their IP range blacklisted to hell.

It's an actual 419 e-mail, a.k.a. "The Tale of The Painted Breast".

Unless you have been dumb enough to give them your address at some point, surely there is no way they could find you, especially if you have used a fake name like the guys over at http://www.419eater.com/ (Shiver Metimbers, Luke I Amyofatha, Ivanna Tinkle, etc.). If ISPs won't even give your personal information to the RIAA, surely they won't give it to Nigerian "snippers!" http://www.419eater.com/ even has stories of people getting money from the Nigerian 419 scammers! By the looks of the lengths some of these 419 scammers are willing to go (holding signs that say "Arse Bandits," putting fish on their heads, etc.) I see little chance in their orchestration of an assassination!

Unless you have been dumb enough to give them your address at some point, surely there is no way they could find you, especially if you have used a fake name like the guys over at http://www.419eater.com/ (Shiver Metimbers, Luke I Amyofatha, Ivanna Tinkle, etc.). If ISPs won't even give your personal information to the RIAA, surely they won't give it to Nigerian "snippers!" http://www.419eater.com/ even has stories of people getting money from the Nigerian 419 scammers! By the looks of the lengths some of these 419 scammers are willing to go (holding signs that say "Arse Bandits," putting fish on their heads, etc.) I see little chance in their orchestration of an assassination!

You can join at the 419 Eater website.

Story of a successful scammer

These people are worthless. They'll get no pity from me about being scammed.

Just in case nobody else posts it:

http://www.419eater.com/

Sorry,

I clicked the "Submit" button too soon. Here is the part I didn't finish:
See this for bad news and this for a laugh.

Interesting that in this article, Nigeria has that highest cost/income ratio in the world.

I bet I can guess the reason

Some people have hobbies where they pretend to be falling for the scam, just to see what kind of wierd nonsense they can get the scammer to do. This site has some funny pictures...

http://tbp.berkeley.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=303

More scammer-baiting can be found at http://www.419eater.com. And if you want more, just click on their links page - their are lots.

The best scammer-scam I've ever seen is the infamous The Holy Church of Fish Bread & Wine. If you haven't seen that one, be sure to check it out.

I'm not yet sure of the details, but do you remember the scene in Brasil where the Central Services guys were "fixing" the HVAC systems in the appartment, and then Tuttle comes in on his zip line and does a cross-over between the sewer output line and the suit air input line and then the two Central Services guys suits fill up with sewage and explode? We need to somehow cross-connect the fax spammers with 419 scammers so they work on eachother.

Oops. Too late.

I disagree. I don't think these scammer web sites are getting that much fool traffic so that taking them down on a particular day matters much, and you end up wasting your own bandwidth.

The only worthwhile thing to come out of all this are the brilliant scamming of the scammers themselves which is tremendously entertaining.

419eater does a great job profiling the scammers. Now what we need is a web site with pictures of the morons who fall for these scams.

419 Eater has been around for a while and is pretty well known for messing with these scammers. Take a look at some of the pictures scammers have sent them and listen to the audio recordings. Some of these scammers really need to brush up on their pop-culture.

Yes

I think that one of the most disgusting images on the 'net can be found at that site.

(note: Image is safe for work. Contains no nudity or profanity. It merely contains a phrase that is utterly revolting and could cause nausea, vomiting and a desire to dig your eyeballs from your skull with a spoon if you understand the reference made in it).

Perhaps you have not gotten the 300+ Emails that I have gotten ... all people from or claiming to be from Nigeria. (There have been arrests for Nigerian scammers that are Europeans claiming to be from Nigeria). Thus 'Nigerian scam'.

Perhaps you are relegated to posting at -1 because of the inflamatory way in which you ask questions. Claim that three-digit area-codes could apply to Africa *they don't*, and seem to imply that there is a conspiracy against Nigeria (which is the origination of the classic Nigerian scam). Read the FAQ I linked above and educate yourself.

Wonderful scam on scammers: check this out - Ha ha ha ha . Some guy out there is a genius, funniest site in years.

I highly encourage anyone who needs alaughtot checkout the 419 eater website referenced in the news clip.

They got this scammer to pose with a loaf of bread on his head and mail them a photo!

And this scammer actually spent $21.50 to mail this guy a $20 USD bill!

Just browse the trophy room and then read teh entire message.

I highly encourage anyone who needs alaughtot checkout the 419 eater website referenced in the news clip.

They got this scammer to pose with a loaf of bread on his head and mail them a photo!

And this scammer actually spent $21.50 to mail this guy a $20 USD bill!

Just browse the trophy room and then read teh entire message.

I highly encourage anyone who needs alaughtot checkout the 419 eater website referenced in the news clip.

They got this scammer to pose with a loaf of bread on his head and mail them a photo!

And this scammer actually spent $21.50 to mail this guy a $20 USD bill!

Just browse the trophy room and then read teh entire message.

For those of you not familiar, there are a number of web sites now that feature accounts of fed-up e-mail users messing with the 419 scammers. Here is one such result. Check out 419eater.

From the 419 eater website:

419 fraud is named after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes.

Check this out http://www.419eater.com/html/419faq.htm

• Websites Fighting the Nigerian Scam/419
• Nigerian Advance Fee Scam
• US Secret Service on 419
• Break The Chain
• 419 Coalition (as noted in the article)

• 419 Eater
• Scam Joke Page
• ScamOrama
• the spam letters
• spl's soapbox

Here's a contest: how fast can the New York Consumer Protection Board's mail server be taken down? I figure if just 50 of us rewrite a few procmail rules, we're bound to win both contests. There's no limit on the number of entries.

Come on! This is New York! The Consumer Protection Board should be publicising links to 419eater.com. There's even a Scammer Baiting Hints and Tips page. If just a small percentage of the NYC population started trolling these scammers, the Nigerian crap would be over. Is anyone worried about being $rtbl'd by them?

Here's a contest: how fast can the New York Consumer Protection Board's mail server be taken down? I figure if just 50 of us rewrite a few procmail rules, we're bound to win both contests. There's no limit on the number of entries.

Come on! This is New York! The Consumer Protection Board should be publicising links to 419eater.com. There's even a Scammer Baiting Hints and Tips page. If just a small percentage of the NYC population started trolling these scammers, the Nigerian crap would be over. Is anyone worried about being $rtbl'd by them?

If you feel most strongly you can help this poor man, please contact me and let us know.

thanks,

Hope to hear from you soonest, awaiting your urgent reply.

(Not actual message)

Dear sir,
I am unable to access my account. Please help. My username is blahblahministryofpowerandwhatever@...

Dear Mugu,
Scram.

If anyone has another suggestion to make life difficult for them I'd like to hear it!

You might want to check out 419 Eater - the people there LOVE to make scammers' lives a misery.

(Yes, I just posted this 2 minutes ago, but being the moron I am I forgot to actually give you a link).

I think this shows exactly how we should all deal with these scammers. The Tale of the Holy Cow is particularly funny.

I think this shows exactly how we should all deal with these scammers. The Tale of the Holy Cow is particularly funny.

Check out some table-turning at 419 Eater.

Today it's 419, but put yourself in a rocking chair at a ripe old age and see if you can spot the scam. It's easy to feel young and smug. I feel bad for the old geezer, in his mind they weren't breaking the law, he was just a trusting old guy.

Makes me cheer for the folks at 419eater.com.

Actually if you read the stories (the Gillian Anderson one is priceless!) on more than one occasion he managed to get the scammer to actually *pay* for a hotel room (he confirmed this by calling the hotel) for an "in person" transaction, and as a bonus he make them run around the airport and hotel expecting him to show up, which is pretty entertaining to imagine.:)

Also many of the scammers seem to be using internet cafes for email access so waisting their time conning conners cost them (a little) money.

Nonsense, if yu read this story. Note that the scammer edited the picture and pasted some unknown's head on there. If these people would be using puppets all the time, they would not care for this.

The whole exchange is here.

I was sent one of these images, but from a scammer using a completely different name, than noted on the webpage.

Here it is, fourth image from the top.

I received this image as an attachment from "Ibuchi Ibuch". I think that many of these "family photos" are shared and recycled between scammers; they could be of any family who looks a bit to come from the place that the scammer claims to be coming from.

I have over 200 E-mails from these people saved. Here is my favorite way of wasting their time:

1. I send them a nice answer, indicating my interest in the business proposal.

2. When I receive their follow-up, I know that their E-mail address is working.

3. An E-mail to abuse@[theirmailservice] takes care of their account, usually within 2 days. Hotmail usually responds very quickly to any complaints.

4. The scammer sends another E-mail, from a new address, saying that their old E-mail address should not be used "for security reasons" or some similar excuse, and asks that further correspondence go through this, new, one.

5. I reply, saying that I am sorry that the E-mail I just sent all the information they requested, including my bank account number, isn't working anymore, and that I'll resend that information to the new address shortly. I also mention my discontent with my "business partner" being unable to keep an E-mail address.

6. Go to step 3 (repeat, until the neuro-paths of the scammer adapts to the situation)

7. NO Profit for the scammer! :^)