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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.
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).
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
~slashdot are my only freinds ):
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...
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.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Might be folklore, but I read somewhere that "scam" stands for the following:
Right you are, urgency should always be a tip-off.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe