The 419eater Community Pulls Some Legs

trusteR writes "Always in the pursuit to rid the world of 419 scams with new and often very entertaining strategies, the class of 419eater.com have set new records in making scambaiting an entertaining and funny artform. Shipping ANUS laptops, $$$, Death treats, Audio and lots of pictures." This beats the amusement value of a Captain Kirk passport; the scam-baiters here managed to get cash in the mail and get rid of some less-than-perfect hardware.

Comments

Worse than 419

[fembots]

If I read the article (or discussion rather) correctly, this guy is conning a 419-guy from "LAGOS" into paying $200 cash + $4500 cheque for "large boxes of misc garbage with a broken laptop that has "ANUS" inscribed on the screen".

I hope the cheque bounced, if this guy did cash in the cheque, wouldn't he be in more trouble? ie receiving the money but providing bogus goods?

If the cheque didn't go through, this guy still can't touch that $200 cash, because there might be some 'misunderstanding' (well that's what the 419-guy will say in court). So this $200 must be held until the cheque is made and cashed (or cash be returned if the transaction cannot be completed).

Re:Worse than 419

[Jucius Maximus]

"Not realy, for the same reason that fraud is aparintly legal in the countries where most of these 419 scams."

Are you aware that the name "419 Scams" comes from section section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code, which is used to prosecute these guys?

Re:Worse than 419

[WormholeFiend]

IMO any money scammed from scammers should go into a fund to raise awareness about these scams... or some other pertinent beneficial goal.

Re:Worse than 419

[DeepHurtn!]

If the Nigerian government actually prosecuted scammers, 419er would have no reason to exist. The Nigerian government is incredibly corrupt, and actual prosecutions under the 419 code are almost non-existant. If you report a scam, all that is likely to happen is that the the police will try to hit the scammers up for a cut.

Re:Worse than 419

[arivanov]

That is besides the fact that not a lot of the scams are run from Nigeria. At one point it was mostly dutch cable networks. After an unsuccessful prosecution attempt about a year ago the police there started to extradit them on the spot. As a result they moved to Tiscali network in the UK where they thrive and florish. In either case it is not Nigeria.

Re:Worse than 419

[Stephen Samuel]

Oh yeah, the cops will be all over the guy.

Something like that happened to an acquaintence of mine. He runs a large (flower) nursery and greenhouses. he thought he saw signs of an intruder on his property, so he called the cops.

They took one look at his ponytail and hydroponics equipment and started qrustioning him. After about 15 minutes of that bullshit, he told them to either inveistigate his complaint or get thr F*%k off of his property. Needless to say, he wasn't too impressed by their 'customer service'.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:just look for the urgency

[to be a troll]

There was a time i had an outstanding debt on my credit report... i got a call once saying that they were a new collection agency handling my account and that if i paid them right then, they would significantly reduce the amount owed...

well i decided to ask them to mail me the details and they refused...they too had a sense of urgency that made me a little edgy. my scam alarms were going off so i hung up the phone and went on my way.

Fake passports and Homeland Security

[shoppa]

The Kirk passport is hilarious, but I doubt the FBI would look kindly on a USAian forging documents and sending them (selling them?) overseas, no matter how ludicrous the names and pictures.

It is interesting that a guy passing counterfeit $200 bills with Geroge W Bush's pictures cannot be charged for counterfeiting because there is no such thing as a $200 bill...

I'm surprised this scam even works

[Powercntrl]

Let's see, these scammers send a rubber check written for an amount greater than the sum of their purchase, ask for a refund in cash - then cash and their items for free. How is this different than a standard bad check scam?

Who in this day and age still accepts checks from strangers over the Internet and ships without waiting for the funds to clear first, or verifiying the check electronically? Even newbie eBay sellers make sure funds clear before shipping. You want your item shipped now, you pay by a more verifiable method.

It seems to me, anyone that falls for a bad check scam nowadays gets what they have coming to them. I did RTFA and it's pretty damn funny that the baiters manager to get the scammer to send cash along with his rubber check, but truthfully, if you're a seller and you ship items to someone you don't know before clearing their payment, you deserve to be scammed.

Re:I'm surprised this scam even works

[Electric Eye]

I wrote a story for a paper I work for this week about some guy here in town who got one of thses checks. You should see the emails these morons sent this guy. Hilarious and horrible English: You can make the transfer of our profit to our headquarters in London.
These morons gave him instructions on how to send the extra $2100 via Western Union. The fake check was sent from Greece in a crappy brown paper envelope and they wanted payemt sent to Scotland. What a racket they got going. The check looks pretty good, but these numbnuts used regular paper stock, notthe heavy paper used by banks, and no watermarks.

Anyway, I've heard a few other stories around here. People are just too trusting and/or dumb. They readily fall for this scam left and right.

Re:Seems like a good plan

[Pandora's Vox]

a sex worker in Toronto actually took a john to court when he refused to pay up. After all, "escorting" is perfectly legal, and it was in neither party's interest to admit that sex took place :-)

-Leigh

(i know that this seems dubious, and the only reference i have is from a university paper but i think it's pretty cool even if it's a myth.

Shameless Self-Promotion

[Dimensio]

September 18 was 419eater.com's first birthday, and it's the site where I learned about scambaiting.

The webmaster, "Shiver Metimbers" (obviously not his real name), held a contest in honor of the event. The goal was to get a scammer to hold up a sign reading "HAPPY BIRTHDAY 419EATER" -- and since a number of scammers already knew what the website was (and since 419 itself might cause the "smarter" scammers to twig anyway), it was something of a challenge. The successful baiter would win the contest. If multiple victories were secured before September 18, the readers of the 419eater.com forum would vote on the best picture.

I rose to the challenge. Though it took me until the last minute to secure an entry, I did finally have a worthy submission. I find it interesting that jonbarry, whose "nude gender-undetermined mugu" picture ended up taking second place, actually encouraged people to consider voting for me instead.

I don't attribute the end result to skill, just luck in finding the right scammer dumb enough to fall for it. You can read the email exchange that led to the pictures and see the pictures themselves at my Birthday Bait page.

I've yet to update it with the final details, though I can report that I was unable to secure any nice new pictures from the lad. I got a little overeager (I figured that I had nothing to lose by asking for a nude group shot, but no dice).

As for the other entries...well, when the 419eater.com forum comes back up, search the Pictures forum for "Birthday" in the subject line. You should come up with a locked topic that has the entries and the final vote totals.

Re:S.C.A.M the acronym

[Strudelkugel]

Might be folklore, but I read somewhere that "scam" stands for the following:

• Sure thing
• Confidence
• Act now
• Money up front

Right you are, urgency should always be a tip-off.

My own scambaiting experience

[Max Threshold]

Several months ago, we started getting relay calls at work from someone who claimed to be in China. He wanted to order several camcorders and laptops and have them delivered to his "client" in Ghana. We told him to piss off. He kept calling, though. Eventually he asked if he could order the merchandise from somewhere else and have it shipped to us, then arrange for someone to pick it up and ship it out of the country. We were like, sure. Sadly, the first items delivered were not laptops and camcorders, but clothes from Old Navy and 60 bottles of cheap perfume from Avon. The address on the credit card bill was in Spokane, WA. We called the credit card company to report the probable fraud, but they said they couldn't help us because we only had the last four digits of the card number! Several weeks later, the scammer called again and angrily accused us of trying to defraud him of his merchandise. We told him we were just waiting for somebody to pick it up. He never called back.

Recently, we gave up on anyone ever coming for the loot and divvied it up. Two pairs of jeans for me (size 32x30), a couple button-up shirts for my co-worker (size XXL!), and the perfume went to eBay.

Too bad... I wanted a free laptop.

419ers getting more imaginative, too

[some guy I know]

The 419ers are getting more imaginative, also.
See this account of how a person looking for a roommate was almost scammed out of $5000.