Fighting the Nigerian Money Scam

An anonymous reader writes "One of the most notorious spams, the Nigerian Money Scam, or 419, has reared its head again with the recent arrest of a California woman who embezzled $2.1 million from her law firm. However, anti-spammer Brad Christensen has apparently been having some success scamming the scammers. This exhibit contains some of his more successful exchanges. It seems he even managed to get some of the Nigerians to fly around the world to meet him. All in all, Bravo!"

Comments

I got an "anti-419" today

[rpjs]

Today I got an email supposedly from the Federal Presidency of Nigeria, apologising for all the 419s I've been receiving and asking for full details of the senders and the organisations they claimed to be defrauding.

I really don't think it's genuinely from the Nigerian gov, although it was posted from an IP address (195.166.233.102) RIPE says is allocated to a Nigerian ISP, rather than being routed through some open relay in Asia. However, I'm finding it hard to work out what the scam is. Spam quality control to see which addresses apply is the most likely reason I guess.

Another 419 example

[cscx]

If you want to read an exceptionally funny example of the Nigerian Fee scam, head on over to haxial.com -- the results are side-splitting. This all happened last week (check the dates).

Re:*yawn*

[singularity]

You obviously do not get as many of these emails as I do.

My mail runs fairly unfiltered on the server, so my mail client gets to download most everything. (Not complaining here, I realize I could change that - I am just stating a fact).

The fact is, I get more Nigerian Scam emails than I do actual spam anymore.

I would say that about 10% of my "junk" email is Klez virus, 40% is regular spam, and about 50% is Nigerian scam emails.

Look at those last two paragraphs - I get more Nigerian scam than I get actual spam anymore. I probably get between 10-12 of the Nigerian emails *a day*.

We might complain about bandwidth being used by spam, but these days Klez takes the cake on my account, followed by Nigerian crap.

That is why I care about cutting down on people using it.

And before you jump on my back about me complaining about my bandwidth, I am talking about between SMTP servers, since ultimately I pay for that one way or the other. An ISP pays per GB transferred, and anytime I get email like that, my ISP (school anything else) pays, and will eventually pass that expense on to me.

That is why I care.

Scams as old as the hills

[Moorlock]

It will probably not come as a surprise to know that the "Nigerian Scam" predates the internet and really, in its essential form, predates Nigeria. If you're interested in historical examples of this sort of thing, you might want to check out sniggle.net's Scams page.

'This guy I knew' received something like this

[guttentag]

Dear Valued Customer,

We would like to cut you in on a deal that will earn you a very fast computer with Windows for only $900. What we need you to do is go to your local store and buy our X-1000 PC for $1,500. Don't worry about the price. We will reimburse you. Remove your X-1000 PC UPC code and mail it to us with your name, address, date of birth, social security number, household income and preferred shoe size, and we will send you a check for $600.

Sincerely. XXXXX Marketing Department

So he buys the PC, clips the UPC and sends them his data. But no check arrives. Not even a burly, ill-tempered Czech mafia guy with a baseball bat. So he writes to them demanding his check, or Czech.

Dear Valued Customer,

You did not provide the proper X-1000 UPC code in your mailing. Please send us the correct UPC code and we will send you your check.

So he writes them back and tells them there are no other UPC codes on the PC.

Dear Valued Customer,

We are sorry to inform you that you have apparently purchased the wrong computer, and since you have removed the UPC code, you cannot return yours to the store. We do not keep UPC codes we receive on file, so we cannot return it to you. We recommend you go back to the store and buy the correct X-1000 PC. If you send us the correct UPC code this time, we are authorized to send you a check for $700 since you purchased two computers. Please hurry, as this offer is only good for 60 days.

Sound familiar? There's a thin line between 419 scams and "accepted American business practices." Either way, there are plenty of gullible people just waiting to be exploited.

Here's what I don't understand...

[sdo1]

One has to assume that the Nigerian scammers are sending out millions of spam, right? They're not using unique reply-to addresses for each one right?

In this case, the address mikeaba@mail.com is at, of course, mail.com. Surely mail.com must have gotten dozens, if not hundreds, of spam reports altering them that a mail.com address was being used for a scam.

What I don't understand is how on earth that address didn't get taken offline by mail.com within a very short time of the original scam/spam being sent. My experience has been that yahoo.com and hotmail.com do a pretty decent job of deleting accounts of addresses that are being used a spam dropboxes. But not mail.com?

Can someone explain what I'm missing here?

-S