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419 Scammer Gets Scammed
johnduffell writes "There's a lot of awareness of 419 scams at the moment, including a report from the BBC of a baiter who managed to get $80 and a birthday card by courier! He did this by convincing the scammer that he was in the Church of the Painted Breast and there's even a photo of the scammer with his breast painted! Presumably the scammers are hoping that the scammees are as stupid as they are."
Several commenters have expressed concern that what this guy is doing is equally wrong, and that he could risk getting sued.
Besides the previously mentioned unlikeliness of any sort of extradition, the article made clear that all proceeds from these reverse scams go to a children's charity. Therefore he's clearly not doing this for personal gain.
I'm would guess that as long as this type of thing doesn't become a serious epidemic, there's no reason the reverse scammers would receive an adverse judgement. Besides, someone has to lodge a complaint against this activity, and who's gonna do that?
If you don't want to directly engage the scammers, but still want to hurt their cause, check out this site. All the images there are taken from the fake banking sites that the scammers set up. The pages refresh every 2 minutes to keep the bandwidth usage going. If you REALLY want to hurt them, and have bandwidth to spare, try going to this page. It will load 12 images, all from the aforementioned fake banking sites as fast as your connection will allow.
There's a very good reason that Mike didn't want to give the BBC his real name. These guys are like the mafia, I don't think they appreciate being made fools of. Many Nigerians believe in "Sharia" - or the death penalty for all kinds of transgressions. Source link
Probably not good people to have your home address and phone.
That's fuzzy thinking.
What law did this fellow break, exactly? He asked someone to send him some money, they did, and he kept it. There was no legal, signed contract between them. There was no handshake or face-to-face meeting or phone call or anything. Just an unsolicited email requesting money that was answered with an equally unsolicited request for money.
If someone walks up to you on the street and says, "Please give me your bank account number so that I can share millions of dollars with you" and you say "OK, but it will cost you $80" and they hand you $80, have you stolen their money if you then don't share your bank account number with them, which they want for obviously nefarious purposes? I know of no law that covers this sort of behavior between two private individuals.
Morally speaking you have more of a point. The question is, is it immoral to steal from a thief, or rather in this case to trick a thief into giving you some of their ill-gotten gains? Questionable.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
According to the Bible, if you find a thief breaking in, you can simply kill him.
That's how it is according to Oklahoma law, too, and many other states.
It's called the "make my day" law: if I find you breaking into my home (castle doctrine), you are presumed to be there with the capability and intent to do me harm. Accordingly, I can employ lethal force in my own defense. And, for the record, I don't consider this barbaric at all: if you're invading my home, why should I have to stand at grave disadvantage and risk of grievous bodily harm while determining what your plans are? Out on the street, in public, etc., yes--circumstances are open to interpretation, and I need to be sure that the threat actually exists. When you break into my home, though, you're explicitly demonstrating some threat, even unarmed. There is no confusion about your intent when you've broken into my home: you're there to break the law, and you've demonstrated that by doing so (B&E is illegal). How many more laws you're going to break, I don't know, but I'm not obliged to wait for you to start assaulting/killing/raping/etc. me/my family before I act defensively.
Anyhow, no, Islam is not unique in how it deals with home invasion, but I don't consider that barbaric, just good defensive practice. As for hand-chopping, well, I don't care for the practice (I think it is barbaric), and I don't like the idea of selling him into slavery, either (though I'm quite fond of the idea of restitution), but I don't get to make those decisions (at least not until I take over the world).
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca