"Nigerian" Spammer Arrested

Roger_Wilco writes "According to The Globe and Mail, a "Nigerian" spammer has been charged with with first-degree attempted larceny. Hopefully we'll get a few less of that spam now."

Comments

Want to know what happens if you reply to 419s?

[Chilliwilli]

Check out EbolaMonkeyMan for a glimpse into the mind of scammers and the level of intelligence required to believe and reply to them.

And the most interesting part of the story is...

[xcomputer_man]

That he is not even Nigerian -- he is a Canadian. The last guy they arrested was Australian I think. Not that there are no Nigerians sending these emails -- it's just that they are not being caught because of the poor state of law enforcement in the country at the moment. But the fact is that this is becoming more than just a "Nigerian" scam, it has become a very international scam.

(Full disclosure: I am a Nigerian, and it brings me grief to no end that the first thing people think of when my country is mentioned is 419 scams).

Re:similar scams - how this one works

[TheTomcat]

I work for a financial company, but this opinion is mine.

When doing ACH transfers (ie, when you cash a check at one bank, but the funds come from another), there's a 6 month window where a transaction can be reversed (ie, similar to a credit card chargeback). Most banks will settle within 10 days, but there's really no way of knowing that an ACH will not reverse, until that window has closed. It's usually the backwoods banks run by "Nan and Boyd" that take forever to settle ACH.

S

Re:similar scams - how this one works

[ShinyBrowncoat]

From snopes:

The scam works because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) requires banks to make money from cashier's, certified, or teller's checks available in one to five days. Consequently, funds from checks that might not be good are often released into payees' accounts long before the checks have been honored by their issuing banks. High quality forgeries can be bounced back and forth between banks for weeks before anyone catches on to their being worthless, by which time victims have long since wired the "overpayments" to the con artists who have just taken them for a ride.