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

[Kenja]

"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?"

Not realy, for the same reason that fraud is aparintly legal in the countries where most of these 419 scams. If the local government isn't doing anything to stop the 419ers because (as they claim) they can't then complain about this "turn about is fair play" stuff. I guess the 419er COULD try and press charges in the US (that would be funny) but so long as the guy sends the box o' stuff via UPS rather then USPS no mail fraud has taken place.

That having been said, I think all parties in this are jerks.

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

[Ryosen]

>>Not only that, but having other 419 scammers find out that you (a 419 scammer) were scammed would be pretty embarrassing too.

Yeah, how could he ever face the guys down at the golf club? :)

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'.

Re:Worse than 419

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite correct. Most of the 419 emails in my harvester accounts come from Nigeria, Ivory Coast or Benin. I usually do an IP check.

Lottery scams usually come from Holland.

Tiscali is used as they offer free email accounts.

Re:Worse than 419

[erick99]

The 419 guys do not travel here to go to court for God's sake. What are they going to say? "While working my daily scam stealing from your citizes, I got ripped off for $200"?

Hmmm.. gone already

[Phixxr]

Perhaps slashdot should change it's name to siteeater.com.

-Phixxr

google cache

[helfen]

this site need cache - http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:vyoLxQBww68J:sp l.haxial.net/nigerian-fraud/

Re:google cache

[OverlordQ]

Coral Cache of 419eaters page: http://www.419eater.com.nyud.net:8090/forum/viewto pic.php?t=22115

Re:google cache

[Kinetic]

The Coral Cache version is now showing the Slashdotted "down for maintenance" page. No good. The mirrors at MirrorDot have the actual content.

Seems like a good plan

[Thunderstruck]

I wouldn't worry too much about some scammer from Lagos challenging the payment in a US court. Those who come to the courts with unclean hands seldom get any relief.

Even if the scammer did arrive, how does one demonstrate that the goods shipped were not in fact what was ordered in such a way as to convice a court that your scamming activities are minor enough by comparison as to give you relief?

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.

Re:Seems like a good plan

[Idarubicin]

After all, "escorting" is perfectly legal, and it was in neither party's interest to admit that sex took place

Actually, exchanging money for sex is perfectly legal in Canada. The law forbids owning or operating a brothel, consequently a prostitute can't work in her own home. Pimping is right out. The law also forbids solicitation in any public place.

Here's the relevant law (from the Canadian Criminal Code) if you want all the details:

Section 210: Keeping a common bawdy house;
Section 211: Transporting to a bawdy house;
Section 212: Procuring;
Section 213: Offence in relation to prostitution (soliciting).

I'm afraid I don't have any references for the lawsuit itself, but I can well believe it took place.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

what about violence?

[alarocca]

hows about some 419maulers.com ... instead of simply making fun of the scammers, we should abuse them with medieval torture devices and post the pictures on the internet!

Oh No!

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

"Tragedy struck today as a group of "nerds" called the '419Eaters' were killed in, what is being described as, a classic Organized Crime killing. In other news, Britney Spe...."

Great Stuff

[ravenspear]

They got this one guy to send a pic of himself holding up a sign that said "I take it up the arse."

i can't link it bc the site is /.

Re:Great Stuff

[Jucius Maximus]

" They got this one guy to send a pic of himself holding up a sign that said "I take it up the arse.""

See also: "I AMA DILDO" (source)

What are...

[TechnoLust]

"death treats"?

And there goes the servers...

[CheechBG]

Servers just succumbed to the /.ing. From what I read, guy packed 200 pounds of dead hardware in boxes and made the guy pre-pay for shipping. He put a value on the packages for 9500 bucks, which means the poor scammer at the other end will have to pay import fees or something along those lines.

Interesting note in the forum thread, for every 30lbs it is costing this guy $475. Funny stuff. He does have a picture of the 200 in cash.

Re:And there goes the servers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also since I frequent there, and since slashdot killed the site(thanks a lot trusteR!) here are some more details.

The scammer was trying to do a fake check scam, where they send you a fake check to pay for the goods. These scams count on people depositing the check, and thinking that the check cleared. They also tend to send some amount over what you requested, with them asking you to send the remainder to someone else(which is usually them or someone affiliated in the scam). Then when the bank figures out the checks a fraud, the victim is missing the goods that the scammer "bought," and owes the bank what ever money they gave back to the scammers.

The computers got the name Anus because the scammer called them that.

To continue the story, the scammer issued a threat about not receiving the computers, and only getting junk. The scammer then send a DHL shipper to pick the "real"(still more junk) package up. At this stage the package is not traceable, something is up with DHL. Both the scambater and the scammer don't know what is up at this point.

Also some of the scambaters found the place where the packages were being shipped to, and visited what appears to be someplace in the UK the scammers drop their ill-gotten goods off. They posed as inspectors, got pictures of the supposed scammer/scam helper, and took what appears to be pictures of some remains of the scammer/helper's other scams.

So that is all that is known at this point, and they tend to be frequent on updates when info comes in. Due to the slashdotting I doubt they will be updating this as frequent.

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.

Perfect in time for Halloween

[YetAnotherName]

From the summary:

...Death treats...

I just gotta get some of those! That'll take care of those pesky costumed kids with their shrill cries of "tricker-treat" about this time each year!

Eh

[RyoShin]

While I don't mind a scammer getting karma-lized, I have to wonder about the whole procedure. Of course, the legality of the scammar isn't the question, but rather the legality of the counter-scammer. This sounds about the same as the P-p-powerbook (which I'm sure everyone remembers): Sending false goods, misappropiating funds, etc. However, for any charges to be pressed, it will have (had) to be intercepted by federal agents and seen for what it is, or the scammar will have to spill the beans. Both cases are very unlikely, so the counter-scammar is probably safe.

However, I suggest against going this far in the future. Keeping the guy going with fake e-mails is probably fine and well, but when you start with the exchange of funds or goods (sic), where is the line drawn that the counter-scammer doesn't become a scammer himself?

Re:Eh

[ravenspear]

where is the line drawn that the counter-scammer doesn't become a scammer himself?

Obviously he is a scammer himself. But that is the whole point. The people doing this wouldn't consider it wrong becasue they are not scamming innocents, but rather those who would scam innocents. Whether that argument is valid is more of a personal opinion. This is just a new form of vigilante justice which has always been a topic of disagreement. If I knew you were going to kill me tomorrow would I be justified in killing you today?

The Cthulhu Nigerian chain-yank is still the best

[Anonymous Coward]

www.geocities.com/steerp1ke/David_Ehi.html

'Nuff said.

Re:just look for the urgency

[wcrowe]

The old saws still apply:

If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't.

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...

Re:Fake passports and Homeland Security

[Dachannien]

Is it a forged document if there is no physical copy, only a Photoshopped image?

Re:Fake passports and Homeland Security

[zx75]

Yes, but it is fraud if he purposely misrepresents said $200 bills as legal tender.

Re:Fake passports and Homeland Security

[stratjakt]

Yes

Online retailers will generally want you to fax or scan and email your ID to ship to any location other than your billing address.

If you send them a photoshopped ID, it's still forged, and it's still fraud, and you still go to a pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

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:I'm surprised this scam even works

[stratjakt]

A cheque written on anything is legal, you don't have to use the slips of paper the bank sends you.

I could write "pay to the order of (whoever) 1200.00" on a kleenex, and it's still a cheque. All it needs is my account number and signature/stamp.

Banks would (and of course, should) give you a hard time cashing it, they'd probably call my bank, and my bank would call me, but in the end, after much bitching, it's a legal cheque.

All a cheque is is a written permission from whoever writes it for the bank to transfer the funds.

Re:I'm surprised this scam even works

[DutchSter]

Many people don't realize how long it can take for a check to bounce. The standard method of clearing checks is still physically shipping little pieces of paper around the country. So for a California check to bounce in New York requires the physical check to travel across the country, sit on a manager's desk until he gets around to dealing with it, and physically travel back before you find out it's no good. This can take weeks. Overseas, longer.

Just wait til tomorrow (the 28th). It'll be interesting to see how quickly checks start bouncing. Check 21 takes effect in the US. Quick version, it gives banks and merchants the option to move images of your original check electronically and destroy the original. I work a bank and the retail folks have been cautioning customers for a while now that float time (time it takes a check to clear your bank after you write it) can be reduced to almost nothing, and thus people should be more careful about what they write checks for. For example, did you know that Target Inc has their own bank? A check you write at Target can be posted against your account before you walk out the door, and processed as a check (not just an electronic debit as some places do now).

It won't be a sudden transformation, but I'm guessing that within the next two years people will be asking "what the heck WAS float?" As another side effect, it will also cut down on check kiting schemes that rely on float.

Re:I'm surprised this scam even works

[innocent_white_lamb]

I know a guy who sent in a check for a traffic ticket and wrote in "legal extortion" in the memo part. The court not only didn't accept it, they turned around and charged him with some silly trumped up contempt of court charge.

I own a small business and a few years ago I had a "disagreement" with the workers compensation board. After much fiddling around (and a so-called board hearing that was pretty much a waste of my time) they told me that I had to pay them $650. I mailed them a cheque and put "Extortion" in the memo field. They cashed it and I never heard anything more about it.

Another time, I caught some roofers fixing the building next door, plugged into MY electrical power. They had run a couple of extension cords across the intervening 30 feet of vacant lot and plugged in to one of my outside power outlets. Without asking or anything. Had they asked, I would probably have told them to go ahead and use it but not asking ticked me off rather efficiently.

I switched off the power to that outlet, then went and yelled at them for a bit and told them that I needed $50 to "cover the cost of the power they used and the cost of my time to deal with them." They gave me their office address and told me to send them a bill.

I did. In fact, I invoiced them for $50 for (get this) "asshole fee".

A couple of weeks later I got a $50 cheque in the mail. It stated that it was "in payment for ASSHOLE FEE" right on the cheque.

It was almost worth framing. But I cashed it instead...

Re:I'm surprised this scam even works

[innocent_white_lamb]

Check 21 [federalreserve.gov] takes effect in the US. Quick version, it gives banks and merchants the option to move images of your original check electronically and destroy the original.

For about the past three months, my "bank" (actually a credit union) has been doing something like that. I don't know about the clearing/cashing end of things, but now instead of returning my actual cheques along with my statement they send me sheets of "mini-copies" of my cheques, 6 per 8.5x11 page. They say that Revenue Canada and the courts now accept these images as proof of payment, and if you need copies of your cheques they keep these images on file for 10 years.

It makes my bank statements a lot lighter and easier to file, and I get the statement in the mail about a week faster than I did when they send the actual paper cheques back.

Re:just look for the urgency

[Kenja]

"If you're every involved in something, and the other party has some crazy sense of urgency, there's a 95% posability it's a scam."

So when my doctor tells me I urgently need to have my pancreas removed there's a 95% chance that he's trying to scam me? That bastard, I'm going to tell him to go to hell right away!

Good idea!

[ggvaidya]

419eaters eating into your bottom line? Slashdot them into oblivia!

$Superhero: Not so fast, evil scammers! This website has been mirrordotted!

[Cue: spammers cringe in fear, as the stampede of the nerds is rendered harmless.]

Re:Good idea!

[Phexro]

And... you get to the second page how?

Re:Hmm....

[gcaseye6677]

How about the fact that innocent victims are not being harmed? Old ladies are not being scammed out of their retirement funds. Only those that have shown a desire to scam others are being scammed here. While the legality is questionable, I certainly am not bothered by it.

Re:just look for the urgency

[david duncan scott]

"OK, you're ugly, too"

Thank you. I'll be here all week.

Well...

[temojen]

4 days till Halloween.

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.

You can't cheat an honest man.

[karlandtanya]

Con artists depend on the greed and self-delusion of the mark. It is the ability of the mark to lie to himself in order to steal from and cheat other people that makes a con work.

If I'm a con artist, I would love it if every mark thought he was going to turn the tables on me. Makes my job all the easier.

TANSTAAFL, people. Reality is not nearly as exciting as delusion. But it's a lot more reliable.

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.

souvenirs for playing with scammers

[museumpeace]

While we are waiting for that poor server to get back on its feet, let me tell you about a less common scam that has a higher percentage of success because it is more disarming to its victims. It is the "overpayment for a large purchase, to defray shipping costs" scheme. It goes roughly as follows.

1. you advertise an expensive item on line..car, piano etc.
2. an "agent" for an interested buyer responds, perhaps in an exchange of several emails to build your confidence...after all YOU initiated this transaction.
3. if scammer is in a big hurry, he offers an extra few thousand $ "for shipping" and , sight-unseen sends you a cashiers check with sometimes complex instructions that the check should be cashed immediately and the excess mailed or wired to some 4th party who is the "shipper" and requires payment before he will pick up the goods.
4. your bank honors the cashiers check
5. you wire the money
6. 3 days later the bank tells you the check was a forgery and debits its full amount from your account.
7. and of course, no shipper ever arrives

For me, the eagerness of the "agent" to pay full price for a piano they never saw set off alarms. My state's atty Gen. office had a web page exactly describing the scam. The headers on the email were hard to trace but I could not tell whether the buyer was supposedly in NY or London. When the FEDEX arrived with the check and the country code was NG, that was the last straw. I now have a totally phoney cashiers check , a good piece to study if you want to learn how to spot forgeries, framed in the den. We got one phone call [which I wish I knew how to trace...don't give out your phone number!] and several frantic e-mails from our scammer. When I offered to "save" him some money by waiting until the check cleared and sending him back the excess over what the shipping would really have cost, he protested that the buyer might soon change their mind about the purchase. When I subsequently gave him the URL for the AGO's website and accused him of fraud he acted hurt. I never told him about the typo in the fine-print stripe urging me to read the missing "Bank of America water mark".
Uh, anybody want to by a piano?
if you are going to play these games, you might want to bookmark the Fedex country codes page and set up one or more spam-hole email accounts.

Monty Python Reference

[AgentPhunk]

If these guys show up at your door, then yes, definitely tell them to piss off.

Re:Virtual scam is safest

[John3]

This one is also funny...so you've been warned. :-)

I got an email about the estate of a Mr. Gerrand Schwartz so I decided to claim that I was his son, Frank Albert Oral Schwartz. I provided a link to the Yahoo article about my "dad's" death.

When I originally created those Yahoo stories you could still obfuscate the URL's using http://news.yahoo.com@206.67.47.69/schwartzdeath.h tm which made it look even more impressive. :-)

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.

Re:just look for the urgency

[networkBoy]

what's really funny is you gor an insightful mod!
-nB

get them to buy me stuff

[man_ls]

I wonder if I could convince any of them to buy me stuff..."my only computer is at my office, and my boss reads my e-mails and he is very greedy, in order to better assist you with this transaction and ensure your funds are safely delivered, I require a private computer for which I can access remotely. You may deduct the cost of the computer from my assistance fee."

Only problem is, getting a safe address to ship it to, where I wouldn't have angry Nigerians coming to kill me.

The P.O. box at my college is probably fairly safe, but I don't know *how* safe. heh.

./ effect

[cavac]

The downed server reminds me of the ThinkGeek crash, see http://www.thinkgeek.com/slashdotted/index.shtml

They even have a nice picture of how a ./'ed server looks like ;-)

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.