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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."
The question now is just, whether the stupid idiot on the other hand might
;-)
actually sue those who tricked him for having been scammed for US$80.
There is not much chance he would get anything out of this, as he
tried to scam people himself, nevertheless - it might keep the guy
here quite busy for a while (because he might STILL have to appear
in front of a court).
Now - THAT would be interesting to see...
Always remember - they might be on the "safe side", since THEIR
judicial system doesn't care too much about them. But on the other
hand, by tricking the 419 scammer out of his money, we are breaking
OUR laws (be that in the US, Europe, or wherever you are - and our
courts look very different on these issues!). Or - in simple
terms: Two wrongs don't make a right!
Also - in comparison, the guy in Nigeria is guilty of ATTEMPTED
fraud, whereas the guy who tricked him out of his US$80 is guilty
of ACTUAL fraud...
Don't get me wrong - I'm all for making sure that this whole 419
scam thing stops. But I don't think we should simply skip the
principles of our 'western world' while doing it!
Isn't running a reverse scam like this one illegal? I mean, the nigerian scammer got what he deserved in every way, but isn't it kind of dangerous to do these kinds of reverse scams? I know the governments in the U.S. and UK might actually prosecute, which the nigerian scammers don't have to worry about from their govs.
From the article:
If you're tempted, just remember Prince Joe who's still sending e-mails saying he's sticking to his promise and saying the daily prayer: "When all above seems a great test, Get on down with the Holy Red Breast."
w00t! Where do I join?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Greed is the common denominator whether it be the greed of the scamee or of the scamer. It goes way back to the old adage, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't. Couple greed to gulibility and you've got the wild west show that is the www.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
"Presumably the scammers are hoping that the scammees are as stupid as they are."
Having met a decent slice of Human population, I can say that in fact that is the case.
"/Dread"
If they ever knocked on the 419 eater's door, all he'd have to say is, "Listen, I know what it looks like on the website, but it's all photoshopped and fake. I emailed the guy, but he never sent the money. It's my cash, a picture the guy sent, and a photoshopped photo of the envelope."
They'd never get a conviction.
I AM NOT A LAWYER, but if the guy ever gets that knock, the only thing he should say is, "I want a lawyer," over and over again until he gets one.
You're correct, though: two wrongs don't make a right. There's no point in having a Criminal Justice system if we don't uphold our laws and lead by example. Rather than punish the scammer by ripping him off, he should have used the information he gathered to get charges pressed against him in Nigeria.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
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?
Customs Agent: Reason for entering the country?
Scammer: I'm here to beat the tar out of David Hyde Pierce of the Church of the Painted Breast, who stole $80 from me while I was trying to rip him off for $18,000.
Customs Agent: *puts on gloves* Step into this room, sir.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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.
The story reminded me of this site. I'm not sure if the responses are real but I particularly enjoyed reading the Cthulhu response to a 419.
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.
Or these successful counter-scams (this one and the p-p-p-powerbook thing) sound too funny to be real? The more I think about it, the more I think these counter-scams are just hoax posted by some guys looking for cyber-attention. Well, the p-p-powerbook thing seemd to involve too many people not to be real, but this breast painting thing definately sounds like a hoax to me.
perception is reality
If you read the article and/or had ever read 419eater you'd know that this is an extensive international ring.
As it happens they have confederates in London and Mike can be assumed to be in England given that it's a BBC story. Holland is also a big center of the "Nigerian" scam. They can afford all of this because, I'm afraid, the scam actually works.
While the poor schlubs who actually work the scam in the initial phases are poor patsys the people actually working the scam are rich, powerful and often even Nigerian government and law enforcement officers, which is part of what makes prosecutions of the scammers a nonstarter in Nigeria.
KFG
Con artists target the greedy and gulible... They target you and try to convince you that you can scam them.
Conning a con artist is NOT equivalent - you're scamming a person who deliberately targeted you in hopes of stealing from you.
As far as I'm concerned, conning a con artist is like beating the crap out of someone who tries to mug you - something that should be applauded.
Last fall I received an email from a Nigerian who identified himself as a psychologist and was interested in obtaining some stress management materials I referenced on my website. As soon as I read it I thought to myself that this was going to be the start of a 419 scam. I almost ignored it but then thought that I would play along. I told him that to mail the materials I would need $15US to cover the postage and to my surprise a couple weeks later a cheque arrived. I was sure it was going to bounce but when it didn't, I sent him what he asked for. The moral is that Nigeria is a big country and not everyone there is trying to run a scam.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
If I were this guy, I'd forget about the spammers -- I'd be more worried about his involvement at the Church of the Painted Breast. I just asked my Most Holy Pastor here at the Church of Scientology, and he told me the Painted Breasters are a scam and just a "stupid made up religion to scam the weakminded out of their money". And my pastor isn't lying -- in fact, he *can't* lie, even if he wanted to. He cast out the demons of lying when that exorcism went on sale last fall. I wish I had the $23,500 required; all I had was $15,000, so I just exorcised the demons of disobedience and free thought.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
...try it yourself. Study the posted scam baiter correspondence and try to mimic it with a few pet mugus. You'll find that while some of them are wise, many of them will fall for quite a bit of bullshit.
I've not yet conned money from anyone, but I have managed to get two scammers to be 'baptized' in the name of my church (the Church of the Golden Shower), and you can see the pics linked in a previous posting of mine (the pics are also in the 419eater.com Trophy Room, along with two other trophies that I received previously, one of them a Father's Day card for my dad, but right now the site is slashdotted). The "Golden Shower" baits are still ongoing, and I'm tempted to get the scammers to send me something via snail mail. Perhaps not money, but maybe hardcopies of the photos.
At some point I plan to document the email exchanges that led up to me receiving the pictures. I'm not as funny in my presentation, but it would at least give other baiters who haven't had luck getting pics an idea of how to convince the scammers to send one (in my case, I played along until they asked for money, then confessed that I personally couldn't afford what they wanted, but I could appropriate church funds ONLY if they agreed to join the church).
I have no reason to doubt the Church of the Painted Breast bait. The guy in the pic was successfully baited by others (note that one of the pics that Shiver/Mike/David sent is of a group of clowns with other pictures of "Joe" photoshopped in -- those came from other baiters, and you can see one where he's dumping water on his head and holding a sign that reads "SOAKED!") and Shiver is a resident expert amongst the baiting community.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
...wasn't even intentional. Guy asked a scammer to pose for a photo holding a sign with a company logo.
Scammer didn't exactly pose with a sign. Scammer did something else, something that no one expected, and that now has the baiter being revered by other baiters as a god (this is not my work, I really envy this guy);
Behold.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
419 flashmob
I have a similar tactic I use on telemarketers /.-ers flame me out of karma, just think about your ratio of hangups/cussings -to- sells each day; NOBODY likes telemarketing except telemarketers -- and from what I gather even most of you would drop it like a bad habit if you felt like you had something else to fall back on...);
(and before you telemarketing
Without ever actually buying anything, I take up as much of their time as I can so they can aggravate the fewest people (overall) at the highest expense and with the least payback possible. How does this "help"? By starving them (eventually) out of existence; they know there is only a certain amount of "gold" in them-thar hills, and their chosen method of retrieving it has shifted over just the last few years from the equivalent of "panning" a small stream to "sluice-mining" the entire mountain down to a puddle -- if it takes just as long for them to retrieve all the gold in the mountain using one method as the other, even they will eventually choose to use the least expensive method (and that business model isn't going to involve paying a ka-hundred college students, retirees, and bored housewives even minimum wage to sit in rented office space and use rented telephone lines to bother you and me, it's going to much more closely resemble doing some actual market research and targeting their customers -- think rifle -vs- shotgun.)
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That is purely classic.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
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
A court will not award damages to a party that has 'unclean hands'. The scammers are attempting to negotiate a contract by which they have no itention of abiding--indeed, by which they cannot abide (they don't have eighteen billion dollars, now do they?)--and which would be illegal even if they could carry through their promises. Loosely speaking, the terms: Scammer gives Baiter $80, Baiter gives Scammer $18000, Scammer gives Baiter $millions.
Consequently, the doctrine of clean hands (Link, Link) would tend to preclude successful legal action by the scammers. No court would enforce the contract, and trying to get the original $80 back would expose the scammer to far more costs and probably criminal prosecution.
~Idarubicin