A Day in the Life of a Nigerian Scammer

prostoalex writes "The media made a Nigerian scammer's career look too easy. Get online, introduce yourself as a corrupt government official willing to take the money out of the country, and wait for the wire transfers from victims to start rolling in. So, the Associated Press takes us through a day in life of Nigerian scammer. It's a life that takes place in Internet cafes with aged screens and free Webmail accounts. However, by the end of the article the AP talks about some people who have made a good career out of it - three cars, two houses. That is, until the next crackdown comes along."

Comments

419 eaters

[Eugene]

http://www.419eater.com/ is a nice place to see the successful story against 419 scammers

Nigerian Internet Relay scam calls

[Anonymous Coward]

I work as a relay operator that does Internet Relay calls which are for the deaf and hard of hearing. They log in, type in their message and we speak it to the person they want to call. Pretty useful for someone who can't hear. Plus it's a pretty easy job that lets me study between calls.

Unfortunately , Nigerians have discovered this service, and are using it to do scams. Roughly 90% of all Internet Relay calls we get now are Nigerians doing scam calls. There's nothing we can do because it's a mandated service by the government.

But it's damn annoying to have to relay for someone you KNOW is a Nigerian scammer. Management doesn't do anything because we get paid if it's a scam call or not.

Meh. No really.

"PLS I MR JOHNSON JOHNSON FROM NIGERIA PLS I WANT 2 BYE 500 PUPPIES TO SHIP TO LAGOS NIGERIA I HAVE 5000 DOLAR MONEY ORDER GAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGA"

Anyways, if you ever get a relay call, for god's sake, don't accept a money order to ship anything to Nigeria.

(posted as Anonymous Coward for obvious reasons)

Re:Why Nigeria

[daremonai]

The answer, of course, is that they don't all come from Nigeria. In the 90(!) of them I have received in the last week, they've come from the Netherlands, the UK, Palestine (via France and Ireland), Burkina-Faso, the UAE, China, Iraq (via Switzerland), the Philippines, Cote d'Ivoire [Ivory Coast], Benin, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Spain, India, Liberia, the Congo, Russia, Togo, Swaziland, Ghana, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Senegal, and a couple labeled vaguely "West Africa" or just "Africa." Oh, and a passel of them from Nigeria, of course. [I'm just reporting the nominal origins of the mail here; often this is faked, of course. In fact, a lot of the allegedly Nigerian mail really comes from South Africa or other places.]

Looking over this crop, it does appear Nigeria still has first place, but the UK, the Netherlands, and Russia in particular are moving up fast. So it's not just a third-world thing.

To answer your other question, I guess scammers in the US are too busy phishing to bother with relatively labor-intensive deals like the typical Nigerian scam.

And in case you're wondering, yes, I do have a job where my email address has to be prominently posted on a number of web pages. And yes, I do have 3 layers of spam filtering on the account - these all came out of the spam trap.

Re:Have a heart.

[Ponzicar]

A different time? Have you never heard of PT Barnum, pyramid schemes, snake oil, and patent medicine? Or on this matter specifically: "This type of scam takes different forms of disguises and dates back to 1588 where it was known as the 'Spanish Prisoner' scam." From http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/amazing_offers /frauds_hid.asp or see: http://www.answers.com/topic/spanish-prisoner While I know there are some old timers out there, I don't think any were around before the 16th century.