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419 Scam Costs Britons 8.4m GBP in 2002
Albanach writes "In this article the Scotland on Sunday newspaper reports figures from the UK's National Criminal Intelligence Service which show 150 Britons were caught out by the Nigerian 419 scam and its variations in 2002, with a total loss of 8.4m GBP ($13.3m US)or around 57,000 GBP ($90,000 US) a head. "
Scurvy makes you think crazy things.
Bowie J. Poag
Dear Sir
We Do Not Know Each Other But I Am The Son Of The President Of Scotland Yard. I Need Your Help To Recover The Sum Of One Point Five Billion Pounds (Bp 1,500,000,000) Which We Have Recovered In Nigeria. To Proceed Please Send Your Credit Card With The Pin On A Post It...
(lameness filter preventing to post in upper case)
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Never was the National Criminal Intelligence Service less aptly named.
United States President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced today that Nigeria was the latest target country in the "War on Spam." "Too many rich people have had their money unflairly taken away by these evil people." said President Bush. He continued by saying "We shall wipe them off the continent of Australica." Prime Minister Blair stood at his side in solemn agreement. After President Bush finished, Blair corrected Bush's mistakes for reporters including "unflairly" and "Australica."
You've really got to pity the legitimately deposed dictatorial families that must have a way to get their money out of the country.
They send out email to a select few upstanding citizens, hoping to be able to get their millions out of the country for a small percentage of the money. Then, no one believes that the offer is legitimate!
Yes, these deposed dictator's relatives are the real victims in all of this! Let's not forget about their tragic plight.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
> Stiff lower lip and all that rot
Only if you're standing on your head! It's a stiff *upper* lip you're thinking of.
Seriously, though, has anybody considered how easy it would be to data mine the output from credit cards or supermarket loyalty cards etc. to identify gullible people? People with a big annual spend who buy gold plated hi-fi connectors, or crystals to stop damaging radiation from computer monitors, or some of the more ridiculously expensive "health" foods. Oh wait, I just saw the special offers on my credit card statement. Someone just did.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I totally agree. You just can't teach common sense. Why, just today, I was talking with the finance minister of Uganda as I was transfering control of my entire life savings in a complex attempt to skirt international finance laws, and he said the exact same about the Nigerian scam. Some people are just surprisingly gullible.
Will Scotland Yard please release the 150 e-mail addresses?
I have some really interesting never-to-be-repeated offers that will interest them.
I understand they don't clean you out right away. They actually string you along for a while and get you to raise some more funds to cover "unforseen complications" or bribes or some such nonsense. Once they've bilked you out of a lot more than the value of your actual bank account, then they vanish. A woman in the US (CA I believe) actually embezzeled her law firm's ENTIRE CASH RESERVES to give to these d!ckwads. The firm found out when their settlement cheques to clients bounced!
Freedom: "I won't!"
Send me ten quid or a 5 gallons of diesel and I'll cut the fibre for you. Throw in a couple of cans of Guinness and a Tom Yam Chicken with Fried Rice and I'll bury the spammer while I'm backfilling the hole.
Join him. The above poster didn't specify whether it was a mean, median or modal average, nor the digits of accuracy of the number 50.
My experience is that the hypothesis about stupidity is true, even for very large values of 50 (50%).