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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.
this site need cache - http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:vyoLxQBww68J:sp l.haxial.net/nigerian-fraud/
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?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
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!
"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...."
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
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
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.
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?
'Nuff said.
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...
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!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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
- you advertise an expensive item on line..car, piano etc.
- an "agent" for an interested buyer responds, perhaps in an exchange of several emails to build
your confidence...after all YOU initiated this transaction.
- 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.
- your bank honors the cashiers check
- you wire the money
- 3 days later the bank tells you the check was a forgery and debits its full amount from your account.
- 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.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.