Slashdot Mirror
Sweet Revenge On Nigerian Scammers
davesag writes "I just came across this fine site, 419Eater, wherin people counter scam the Nigerian 419 scammers that have been plaguing our spam filters for the past few years. The UK paper The Guardian is also running a fine article on this site. The site author, and several other contributors, have taken to responding to the scammers, using obviously fake names and so forth, and then string the scammer along for as long as possible. In many cases they get the scammer to pose for a photograph! Amazingly the scammers are just as gullible and greedy as their typical victims, and fall for the most obvious ruses hook, line, and sinker. 419eater welcomes contributors, so if you ever wanted to get your sweet revenge on these low-lives, here's a channel for you. The 419 refers to the section of the Nigerian criminal code under which such scams fall." We've linked to a few such fraud-baiters before, though few with as amusing a photograph.
They look just like I'd imagined too!
In one of the letter threads, he requires the scammer to identify himself on a photo, With His Chosen Password!. Of course, this password is carefully chosen in order to positively identify the business transaction partner.
:-)
Hilarious.
There are a whole host people replying and stringing along the thieves and potential kidnappers - the Lads from Lagos have some great stories and images, Scamjunky (be kind, he's on geocities), and the obligatory Snopes link. There are also tons of links at Google Directory.
Just a friendly reminder to everyone that the criminals behind the Nigerian scam emails are just that -- criminals. There have been several murders involving those who have become involved with the scammers. Granted, these are people who went to meet with them foreign locales with pockets full of money. However, this is definitely a "better safe than sorry" scenario. If you really must contact these people for pestering purposes, guard your information carefully.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Having conned some con artists, myself (in other contexts), I am always amazed at how blind they are to the game. I mean, isn't it cliche that those who can't be trusted are always suspicious, because they expect the world to have motives like they do?
I once conned someone ten minutes after he conned me, in exactly the same way, to teach him a lesson, and he fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Apparently the cartoons of my youth were right -- evil defeats itself through fatal flaws of its own design.
Lack of vision: courtesy of greed.
From: "Deeoni Chow" (address classified)
To: Slashdot
Dear Sir.
My name is Deeoni Chow, and I am the Lawyer of Son of Marcos Jacobs, the recently Assassinated President of Nigeria. Your contact information was referred to me by one of my trusted contacts, whose name I am not at liberty to compromize. I would like to approach you with reguards to a possible lawsuite. Please to remove my clients picture from your internet immediately or we shall sue for $16,000,000.00 (SIXTEEN MILLION) US DOLLARS.
Having a nice day, Hope this helping
Deeoni Chow
I wonder how far you could get them to go. If you sent one of the scammers a plane ticket to the US, would they come? With a little bit of work and a few hundred dollars, you could probably put them in a US jail.
I'm amused that people think they're getting any sort of revenge against these people. When you can milk them out of US$19M then you have revenge, otherwise it seems to me the scammers are still winning as the time anyone spends to string along these people is not worth it.
This is one of the few scams that I actually don't mind, as anyone foolish enough to think they're going to get millions of dollars in some sort of spontaneous money-laundering scheme, deserves to be penalized for their naivety and perverse sense of greed.
I think this guy is the original. This particular one dates back to early 2001.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
My favourite anti-scam-scam on that site is the one where they got the Nigerian guy to pose for a business card photo under the name "IAMA DILDO." It's laughalicious!
I highly recommend checking out this site. This is a guy that replies to spam and leads them on for as long as he can. It's completely hilarious, his sense of humour is wicked. Here is the page dedicated to Nigerian Scam spam
Random is the New Order.
These are rather unscrupulous people, and if they realize they have been played like this, they may very well try to get some sort of revenge that is less funny than these photographs.
Personally I would just stay clear of them completely. Making fun of hard core criminals is not always that funny in the end.
I know its a shameless plug, but I did pretty much the same thing to one of these guys a while back. I even got him to tell me what kind of boxer shorts he wears (flannel multicolored). I logged it all here/
It's a loaf of bread - the anti-scammer had him pose with a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine in order to "verify his identity" (i.e., waste his time and make him look like a fool).
Brilliant!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A swedish reporter (from Expressen) did this a few months ago.
After a while, he ended up meeting one of the people behind the scam.. in amsterdam. For anyone able to read swedish, the article can be found here.
The best part is definitely the 26th of April.
Back in stockholm
I call Lucas up:
Hi, it's Ingvar
-Where did you go? Are you trying to con me?
Lucas, I'm not who you think I am. I'm a reporter from a large newspaper, I'm just investigating your business.
*silence*
*click*
Without Nigerian scam artists The Spam Letters would just not be the same. Keeping the above in mind, please reconsider your revenge. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
In the Soviet Union, Nigerians are spammed by you!
Oh, wait... D'oh!
Maybe reversed?
In the Soviet Union, Nigerians spam you!
huh?
My head hurts...
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
Even if you do the simplest of counter-scam responses, you make spammers' lives that much harder.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The funniest Nigeria 419 scam of all time ?!
This was featured on slashdot a while back by another user on Slashdot Sunny Dubey
I propose a revised version of the Turing Test designed to wipe out Nigerian scammers.
A program (preferrably written in Perl) will parse the Nigerian scammers letter, and automatically generate a response, leading the scammer into a web that will eventually entagle him and send him to the slammer.
Since the average Nigerian scammer seems a bit dumb to begin with, this might be a suitable stepping stone for the artificial intelligence community to consider.