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419ers Diversify Into Assassination Threats?
Richardsonke1 writes "Just when you thought 419ers couldn't get any worse, now they are sending death threats, according to a story at The Register. The emails require you to 'produce a mandatory sum of US$40,000.00 {FOURTHY THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS} only,into our account given below in nigeria within ninety six hours{96},alternatively you will be SNIPPED and GUNNED down during the period of our oncoming anniversary of fifty years.' All joking of 'snipping' aside, for those people who fall for regular 419 emails, this would terrify many gullible web users."
...after failing to pay Nigerian hitman.
--Rob
I don't think I could afford FOURTHY thousand dollars (American or otherwise) ;)
will work for Karma
Great!
Now I have to read even more spam in order to filter out the fake death threats from the real ones!
What happens if I mark a real death threat from my arch-nemesis as spam? I won't be ready to protect myself.
I know more than a few people who would absolutely go nuts if they got this email. Oh and obligatory joke...
1) Send Death Threat Emails
2) Watch Money Roll In
3) Profit!
You dont even need the question marks.
Let the bidding war begin!
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
They're going about this all wrong. Personally, I'd pay 5 or 10 bucks to have a certificate mailed to me from Nigeria certifying that I have indeed paid my way out of being "snipped".
Write back and ask if they take paypal.
If major governments can be convinced these are "terroristic threats" we might actually get some police action against these annoying criminals.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Guess we have all the proof and reason we need to invade Nigeria now.
That was a scam?!?!
Boxing Equipment Reviews
At least this should bring in the FBI. Death threats crossing state lines has to qualify as an FBI/Justice Department investigation. Perhaps even the State Department if the email was really sent from a Nigerian server.
Perhaps now that the scammers have crossed this line they will get the attention of law enforcement. Sending a death threat is illegal, is it not? I realize that scamming people out of money is also illegal, but in this case it seems like the initial email is already crossing the line...
I think I'd rather be sniped than snipped. OUCH!!!
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
This is a death threat. The State Dept. of the countries involved have a responsibility to protect its citizens. No matter how inept the method might be the threat stands and needs to be addressed.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
New weapon for Counterstrike, large shears! Prepare to be snipped!
If reality was like Slashdot, most people would be (-1) Redundant.
Note : - Your death has been paid for by someone you offended sometime
Bloody ex-wives.. i knew they were up to no good..
What would you do without a monitor? Sit and look stupid behind a keyboard and a mouse
It seems to me that the traffic of people making fun of them (baiters) is very high compared to the dumb people falling for the scam.
In fact, I've been following my friend's baits, and the scammers seem desperate, unwilling to cooperate if you ask for a picture of them or any other information. Contrast this with many months ago where they would take any pictures that you asked them.
Since most of the baiters play along with the scammers story to ridiculize them, the scammers are getting desperate and started to use this new scheme. It is hard to play along with a death threat, compared to, a petition of money for a church in nigeria.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
I'm more than willing to hand over my 30% share of the 27 million dollars left by Sani Abacha, the late Nigerian dictator, if they call off assassinating me.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Note : - Your death has been paid for by someone you offended sometime ago and it will be adviceable that you co-operate with us a.s.a.p.
.A.JOHNSON SECRETARY.
TOWOGBOLA
Oh please. "Someone" from "sometime" ago. $40k to not kill me. Riight. I guess, as the article mentions, this might be a little scary if it's, say, you're first email ever. But c'mon -- some anonymous hotmail account which has never been linked to me gets such a threat, and I'm supposed to worry enough to send $40k to a stranger? They'd need to include at least some personal info (name, address, car make/model/color, what I'm wearing and doing right now, etc.) to make it scary.
I don't see how this can work as well as the "traditional" greed-exploiting 419 scam.
And, assuming the bank account info is legit, seems like the authorities could put the smack down on this silliness pretty quickly.
everything in moderation
Maybe they offer the victim the choice of being emasculated or gunned down.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
So when a mail like this hits Bush's email account (taking in mind Dubya knows how to operate 'that Internet thing') , that would be a threat to him.
Would that finally let some agency take some serious actions against those scammers ?
We should have a licensing program to use the internet. You should be required to answer a set of questions asking you about life in general. If the results say you think everyone is out to get you, then you are adequately prepared to use the internet.
So my years of using president@whitehouse.gov to register on forums and such has not been in vain?
In the current international climate, why would anyone send out stuff that could be considered terrorism? Now, they actually stand a decent chance of being caught. Before, it was only a minor annoyance to international law enforcement. Now, the senders are far more likely to be caught and punished severely.
:)
Not that there's anything wrong with that from our viewpoint though
bash: rtfm: command not found
Item: DHS is highly concerned with any kind of hacking or spamming under the umbrella of "critical infrastructure protection."
Item: the US has already been spun up once before by snipers and the threat thereof.
Question: Given the above, do you suppose that this kind of thing will be taken seriously by the government? Or, perhaps, the proper terminology would be "Too seriously."
And if so, what would be done about it? Probably nothing overseas; but what about the thousands of COMCAST and Cox Cable customers who leave themselves wide open to being hijacked to relay spam?
Dear Mr Assassin
I am willing to pay the 40.000 USD to you as soon as possible.
However, since my money is an old war treasure (33.234.177 USD exactly) locked in an anonymous account in the Canaries, in order to pay you, I need someone in your country to act as intermediary. And God has put you on my way to help me achieve this holy task.
I just need you to send me 28.000 USD in advance processing fee and...
Don't theathe him - he typthes with a lithp.
Somebody I knew sometime ago used the most annoying Nailclippers. The sounds he produced were SNIP SNIP SNIP SNIP. All day long SNIP SNIP SNIP. I always hated that guy, I bet he is the one who is out to get me....I better pay, dying by nailclipper could take a long time........
Message from god, Please logoff, rebooting the Universe
Enlarge your penis... OR DIE!!
aren't there enough problems in the world without drive by hair cutting?
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
when they send this e-mail to a Federal Agent, Judge, etc. personal e-mail address? Making a death threat on any of these persons is a felony and the US could seek extradition. Or mayby W. would consider this a terrorist threat and deliver a $40,000 piece of ordinance via the U.S. Air Force.
If I drive fast enough at the red light, it'll appear green.
Check this out!
Might be worth 40k not to have this guy chasing you around with those...
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
reply back and forge your header to potus@whitehouse.gov and ask him to repeat his message
Of course, that assumes that you're not planning to actually _go_ to Nigeria any time soon. The 419ers do sometimes kidnap and kill suckers who've gone there hunting for their money.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So when a mail like this hits Bush's email account, that would be a threat to him.
Yaas! Based on traffic to a couple of my older accounts, several of the 419 team are using the standard "10,000,000 VAL1D E-MA1LZ!!!" CD of addresses snarfed from UseNet and the WWW. Which, I believe, included "president@whitehouse.gov" in the list of... er... targets?
On the down side, while the Secret Service have no sense of humor ("We're paid not to", I was once told by a freind who's done Presidential detail), and while they keep a file of EVERY threats, they also don't investigate every threat in merionesianly proctological detail. Of course, they do check out a lot of them, but automated death threats sent to world+dog via e-mail would seem lower down the protective detail priority list than the crayon piece snail-mailed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I don't think they'd have to be convinced, I think it actually falls into the law, at least here in the US:
According to Blacks (Law dictionary):
A person is guilty of a felony if he threatens to commit any crime of violence with purpose to terrorize another or to cause evacuation of a building, place of assembly, or facility of public transportation, or otherwise to cause serious public inconvenience, or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience. 18 U.S.C.A. 3077; Model Penal Code, 211.3.
Sounds pretty clear cut. And this is one place where Bush's obsession with invading countries could actually work to our advantage.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The surprising thing is that this individual provided bank account info.
This leaves the scammer far less anonymity than he would normally seek to have.
Especially given that this was a death threat, revealing account info of the sender or an associate of the sender on the first email seems not only out of character for scammers (who are increasingly protective of personal details recently) but downright stupid.
It sounds to me like somebody got the wrong idea with everybody raving about how much they love SpamAssassin. It was probably somebody who does not understand English very well (most likely from Soviet Russia) mistakenly thinking that people love it when spam assassinates you. Ah, the dangers of taking Slashdot too literally.
Personally, I'd be thrilled to know that I pissed off someone enough to warrant taking out a contract on me.
perhaps I need to get out more often...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
US law and US Executive Branch practice are hypocritical and schizophrenic. The US doesn't have any jurisdiction outside the US, and the Executive Branch has the policy that US laws don't apply to US government officials outside the US, but they might or might not apply to citizens, and if you do something overseas they don't like, they can kidnap you and haul you in, or confiscate your boat in the "war on drugs" or whatever.
The chances of getting realistic proactive police support from the US Feds are relatively low, but if you did actually lose money, it's possible that they'll help track down the bank, but they'll probably hit a dead end quickly. The more useful support would be something like telling their embassy that we're more pissed off about death threats than the usual scams against greedy people, or freezing US assets of Nigerian banks that don't cooperate in tracking down the miscreants, but I'm not optimistic.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This must be the "chatter" the CIA and NSA picked up on when Homeland Security raised the threat level from Mango Orange to WillyWonka Fireball Red. Now if you don't mind, I need to go back to homedepot for duct tape and plastic tarps.
I'll bet a mere $10,000 would pay for a PI+hitman to take out the person threatening you. That's a huge savings, and it could be considered self defense.
So the list works more like this:
1) Send Death Threat Emails
2) ???
3) Die Die Die
.sigs are for post^Hers.
We have ordnance that cheap?
In fact, we do, or at least we did. There was something called the "lazydog" that was just a fist-sized chunk of iron with fins. They were shoveled out the back of a B-52 from high altitude. Kinetic energy did the rest. I don't know how widely-used or effective they were.
Plus you can send the assassins mail saying "My name is Laurent Kabila. You killed my Father. Prepare to die!" from whatever address the regular 419ers are using.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I am an experienced 419 scammer, having worked for one of the most famous 419 scammers around, Narob Kulad. I have decided to set up shop on my own and am gathering investors for such a project. Once we have 10 million US dollars, we will begin to send out emails to gullible investors. We only need $34,000 to hit our target of 10 million, and I am selling shares at $1,000 per share to achieve that goal. Our expected return is 400% within one month. We plan on paying back 50% of the profit to our investors at the end of the month and reinvesting the rest for future gains.
If you are interested in purchasing shares, please write to me at....
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Sorta like that Czech guy who walked into the Nigerian embassy in Prague and shot some random nigerians, because he was sick of the spam? Ouch.
The Portland, OR field office told me, "Work it out with your local authorities, if they cannot help you, contact us." Now, keep in mind that I did my homework before calling the field office. Yahoo.com was even good enough to provide a free phone call from their legal council (kudos yahoo!) to explain to me *exactly* what I needed to do such that they could assist the authorities in a full investigation.
To make a long retort simply longer, the local yokels didn't know what to do. We got no joy with them because basically, the stalker had never shown up and brandished a weapon, or somehow vandalized property in a way we could proove or shot her dead on the doorstep.
We ended up getting results by simply *daily* badgering the detective who took the case. I walked him through everything from "how email works for dummies" to speaking with the DA to subpeona Yahoo.com for their mail records.
The whole ordeal took several months and the FBI's part in the entire deal (even though, as you correctly point out, these were serious threats of bodliy harm across state lines) was a fart in a hurricane. I would like to be able to give them props, but without a corpse, they apparently did not feel motivated.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
PS - serious note: I am amazed how many people I have related this story too who either know somebody in a similar situation or have been in this situation. Fixing this problem in my lady's life is one of the most positive things we have done to date. If you have questions how it worked or how to go about this, email me, I will respond - greg.crowe@gmail.com
Since when Bush's invasions have anything to do with terrorism?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
How do I sign up for the Federal Do Not Assassinate List? I need to know NOW!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Page 25 of this pdf has a sample of this scam from when it was sent via snail-mail in 1994.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Most of us were snipped shortly after birth.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot; "They just wouldn't DO something like that!"
-FL
... unfortunately it's mostly Christians on top of the oil (who have their environment totally trashed during extraction), so invading for the sake of the Christians and the oil isn't a coherent policy. (Would we let that bother us?)
Does anyone know whether most of the Nigerian scammers are Muslim or Christian? The country's split about evenly betweent the two groups. If it's the Muslims, well, some of them are fairly free about killing people....
On the more serious side (more serious than murder?): Why doesn't the West simply cut off all electronic banking connections into Nigeria? Phone and Internet lines too? Obviously, because they have lots of oil. Still, if we cut them off, and they cut us off, who would give up first? Can the most-populated African country survive without the world?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Dear assasination company: Im not giving you squat. Ill be waiting for you on the corner of clinton and boardwalk in my hometown on 7/24/04 so you can kill me. Ill be wearing a green shirt and no pants, so ill be easy to spot. COME GET ME! MUAHAHAHA! Sincerely, Hugh Jass
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
It worked with mortage spammers, and I'm convinced that it would work equally with 419 spammers. It attacks them via the same statistical model that they use.
Spamming is based on two sem-related statistics:
What we're currently suffering under is #2: That was the initial response to spammers -- don't respond, and hope that they go away. Unfortunately, that's overwhelmed by #1. We just got it a bit wrong.
It's not that we shouldn't respond to them -- it's that we should not give them our business.
If everybody who was annoyed by spam (i.e. everybody reading this) spent 1 minute a day doing something intended to annoy the spamming community, we'd make their life hell. Remember: there's thousands of times as many of us as there are of them. 1 minute a day times the billion or so internet users out there would come to millions of man-hours would come to about 50,000 man-years per month. Even if our one-minute of work cost them an average of one second to respond to it, that would come to ovef 10,000 man=years/to deal with our counter-spamming over the next year -- and that's 24hour day years, not 8-hour shift-days.
Considering that there's only supposed to be about 100 or so hard-core spammers out there, that means that we're looking at about 100 person-years which means that (at 3 shifts/day), that each spammer would have to hire about 300 people just to shift thru our responses to find legitimate 'marks'.
And there are other things we can do to them too...
- Engage them in useless conversations.
- find out which credit cards they accept, and write/phone those companies asking them to dump them. (enough requests will cause them to do a profit-loss analysis)
- do anything you can think of that would cause them to lose time/money/energy.
Don't let the above list limit you. Come up with your own ideas. Remember -- You don't have to spend a large ammount of time on this. More to the point, you shouldn't spend a large ammount of time on this. The strength is in the numbers.Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.