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

DEAR SIR

[Anonymous Coward]

URGENT ASSISTANCE - FROM USA
IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH 202.456.1414 / 202.456.1111 FAX: 202.456.2461

DEAR SIR / MADAM,

I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, AND CURRENTLY SERVING AS
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE
YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE. I
CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO
HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION, WHICH INVOLVES THE
TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO AN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM
CONFIDENCE.

I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR
ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE
REPUBLIC OF IRAQ. MY PARTNERS AND I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE IN
COMPLETING A TRANSACTION BEGUN BY MY FATHER, WHO HAS LONG BEEN ACTIVELY
ENGAGED IN THE EXTRACTION OF PETROLEUM IN THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA,AND BRAVELY SERVED HIS COUNTRY AS DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.IN THE DECADE OF THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES, MY
FATHER, THEN VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SOUGHT TO
WORK WITH THE GOOD OFFICES OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ TO
REGAIN LOST OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF
IRAN. THIS UNSUCCESSFUL VENTURE WAS SOON FOLLOWED BY A FALLING-OUT WITH
HIS IRAQI PARTNER, WHO SOUGHT TO ACQUIRE ADDITIONAL OIL REVENUE SOURCES
IN THE NEIGHBORING EMIRATE OF KUWAIT, A WHOLLY-OWNED U.S.-BRITISH
SUBSIDIARY.

MY FATHER RE-SECURED THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF KUWAIT IN 1991 AT A COST OF
SIXTY-ONE BILLION U.S. DOLLARS ($61,000,000,000). OUT OF THAT
COST,THIRTY-SIX BILLION DOLLARS ($36,000,000,000) WERE SUPPLIED BY HIS
PARTNERS IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AND OTHER PERSIAN GULF
MONARCHIES, AND SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS ($16,000,000,000) BY GERMAN AND
JAPANESE PARTNERS. BUT MY FATHER'S FORMER IRAQI BUSINESS PARTNER
REMAINED IN CONTROL OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ITS PETROLEUM RESERVES.

MY FAMILY IS CALLING FOR YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE IN FUNDING THE REMOVAL
OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ACQUIRING THE PETROLEUM
ASSETS OF HIS COUNTRY, AS COMPENSATION FOR THE COSTS OF REMOVING HIM
FROM POWER. UNFORTUNATELY, OUR PARTNERS FROM 1991 ARE NOT WILLING TO
SHOULDER THE BURDEN OF THIS NEW VENTURE, WHICH IN ITS UPCOMING PHASE MAY
COST THE SUM OF 100 BILLION TO 200 BILLION DOLLARS ($100,000,000,000
-$200,000,000,000), BOTH IN THE INITIAL ACQUISITION AND IN LONG-TERM
MANAGEMENT. WITHOUT THE FUNDS FROM OUR 1991 PARTNERS, WE WOULD NOT BE
ABLE TO ACQUIRE THE OIL REVENUE TRAPPED WITHIN IRAQ. THAT IS WHY MY
FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES ARE URGENTLY SEEKING YOUR GRACIOUS
ASSISTANCE. OUR DISTINGUISHED COLLEAGUES IN THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION
INCLUDE THE SITTING VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
RICHARD CHENEY,WHO IS AN ORIGINAL PARTNER IN THE IRAQ VENTURE AND FORMER
HEAD OF THE HALLIBURTON OIL COMPANY, AND CONDOLEEZA RICE, WHOSE
PROFESSIONAL DEDICATION TO THE VENTURE WAS DEMONSTRATED IN THE NAMING OF
A CHEVRON OIL TANKER AFTER HER. I WOULD BESEECH YOU TO TRANSFER A SUM
EQUALING TEN TO TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT (10-25 %) OF YOUR YEARLY INCOME TO
OUR ACCOUNT TO AID IN THIS IMPORTANT VENTURE. THE INTERNAL REVENUE
SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL FUNCTION AS OUR TRUSTED
INTERMEDIARY. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MAKE THIS TRANSFER BEFORE THE FIFTEENTH
(15TH) OF THE MONTH OF APRIL. I KNOW THAT A TRANSACTION OF THIS
MAGNITUDE WOULD MAKE ANYONE APPREHENSIVE AND WORRIED. BUT I AM ASSURING
YOU THAT ALL WILL BE WELL AT THE END OF THE DAY. A BOLD STEP TAKEN SHALL
NOT BE REGRETTED, I ASSURE YOU. PLEASE DO BE INFORMED THAT THIS BUSINESS
TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL. IF

Re:DEAR SIR

[Klar]

I fall for those every time! I got one yesterday that actually had [title][surname] in the body of the message. Must be a nice script they use..

Re:DEAR SIR

[Cerdic]

I WOULD BESEECH YOU TO TRANSFER A SUM EQUALING TEN TO TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT (10-25 %) OF YOUR YEARLY INCOME TO OUR ACCOUNT TO AID IN THIS IMPORTANT VENTURE.

I thought it was a hoax and didn't pay the 10-25% of my income and boy was I sorry.

It just goes to show that you shouldn't ignore an email typed entirely in caps.

Re:DEAR SIR

[rcamera]

i didn't pay 10-25% either. i decided to be generous and pay closer to 35% last year. this year, i'm planning to pay closer to 40%.

Anyone

[HUADPE]

Anyone who would open an e-mail with the subject line "Congratulation! You Are Our Lucky Winner!" and then proceed to send that person $5000 sight unseen deserves it.

Re:Anyone

[croddy]

only just barely.

Re:Anyone

[ultranova]

Anyone who would open an e-mail with the subject line "Congratulation! You Are Our Lucky Winner!" and then proceed to send that person $5000 sight unseen deserves it.

No, he doesn't. Being stupid doesn't make one deserving of being cheated, any more than being small and weak makes one deserving of being mugged.

People who fall for Nigerian scams, on the other hand, tend to know that they are dealing with criminals - either the email is fake, in which case they're dealing with a con-man, or the email is genuine, in which case they're dealing with a mass murderer - and deserve to lose some money; maybe it will make them less eager to deal with scum in the future.

Regarding your later post, I'm not offended. I simply find it sad and unfortunate that this attitude of "survival of the fittest" is still a part of human society. People don't deserve to have bad things happen to them just because they were too weak/stupid/clumsy/whatever to keep them from happening. Thinking that they do is what lets various human-shaped predators justify their evil practices to themselves. I really hope that we will grow out of this kind of pitilessness.

Blog of a scammer

[saskboy]

Does anyone know of a blog site written by a scammer? That would be quite the reading. I guess the P-P-P-Powerbook blogsite is sort of the other side of that, but what about the scammer's perspective? Blogging can't be considered serious journalism until the other side is given a chance to defend their actions.

[yes I'm kidding]

Re:Blog of a scammer

[Anonymous Coward]

Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends

Hmm... interesting...

[computerdude33]

*goes to sign up for scammer night classes*

Re:Hmm... interesting...

[computerdude33]

Ok... sounds reasonable... how about I pay you $5000 and you pay me $10,000?

(heheh, sucker...)

Re:Hmm... interesting...

[aussie_a]

I would be happy to, please give me your bank account number so I may transfer the funds.

Capitalism...

[__aaclcg7560]

It's nice to know that the American Dream has reached the far corners of the world. So is Uncle Sam getting his cut of the loot?

Re:Capitalism...

[Planesdragon]

The American Dream is success through work, and the liberty to pursue and enjoy it. There's nothing in the capitalist ethos that supports fraud and theft.

Wrong on both counts.

1: The American Dream is to achieve sufficient success to provide, on your own and being beholden to none, for the whole of your nuclear family until your children are all grown.

Most of those characterised as "living the American Dream" are not, in literal fact, workers. They are businessmen, investors, and executives--who, while they doubtless provide a significant benefit to society, are arguably "parasites" from a strictly "work" point of view. (as in, their contribution to society depends on the physical or mental efforts of others.)

2: Capitalism sure as hell encourages fraud and theft. There IS no "capitalist ethos." There is, instead, a clear recognition by capitalist countries that people are greedy and will act however gets them the most profit.

Capitalism is not a system free of graft, fraud, and theft. Rather, it is a system that aligns the most selfish desires of society with the needs of society as a whole, by way of making investments liquid and fraud prohibitvely expensive.

Scammers...

[M$ Agent 2]

I get a laugh out of these things in my mail, I honestly dont see how some one could be foolish enough to believe these scams. This page hit a note with me though as two weeks ago I got a phone call from "Miami/Dade County Correctional" at any rate out of curriosity I accepted the collect call and some one potraying themselves as a police officer said that some one was in the hospital yadda yadda yadda and tried to get me to dial a number *76 something something LOL anyway it turned out after looking like 2 seconds on google that its a number to forward the charges from the number you dial to your phone bill. I didnt fall for it but it was interesting.

Re:Scammers...

[pyrrhonist]

This page hit a note with me though as two weeks ago I got a phone call from "Miami/Dade County Correctional" at any rate out of curriosity I accepted the collect call and some one potraying themselves as a police officer said that some one was in the hospital yadda yadda yadda and tried to get me to dial a number *76 something something LOL

Did you call the police? I'm sure they'd be interested in a person at a correctional facility who poses as a law enforcement officer and attempts to defraud people using prison phone facilities.

Re:Scammers...

[iminplaya]

I'm sure they'd be interested in a person at a correctional facility who poses as a law enforcement officer and attempts to defraud people using prison phone facilities.

Wadda they gonna do? Arrest him?

Re:Self preservation

[rumblin'rabbit]

Hockey sticks, ding-dong. Russians have hockey sticks.

419 eaters

[Eugene]

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

Re:419 eaters

[sleeper0]

I went to this website and browsed around. In particular I read some of the letters/reports listed on this page: http://www.419eater.com/html/letters.htm

It seems to me the top section is reports done by the website owner as opposed to the bottom section of letters "submissions from fellow scambaiters"

I thought it was pretty interesting that this guy actually scams the scammers, according to notations in big red bold letters he's taken people who wrote to him for over $1200 and I'm sure he's hoping that number climbs as he eagerly awaits more email of marks to flood into him. I assume (since he runs an "anti-scam" website that he's never himself been scammed out of money.

That's really cool. I'm hoping maybe this guy can expand his business, maybe going out on the streets at night and robbing people at gunpoint who approach him that he might think are suspicious

These guys are terrorists, right?

[bgfay]

"It's a war on terror. These scammers, they hate freedom. That's the only reason they do this. It isn't about the money. It's about hating freedom, and liberty too, and all the other stuff in that yellowed up paper down in the National Archives. We gots to smoke 'em out of their holes and kill 'em."
--G.W. Bush

"These Nigerians need to be deported back to Nigeria. What do you mean they're already there? Deport them to some place else then. (Did I say it okay George?)"
--Tony Blair

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:Nigerian Internet Relay scam calls

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course I did something.
 
I complained to management. Everyone here complains about Nigerian calls. We make fun of them. We use every damn technicality to get rid of them as fast as we can. Because everyone was so angry about having to do those calls we had a big meeting last month with management. I told them I get over 100-150 prisoners trying to either chat up with a female operator or trying to make a free call through us (speech to speech). Ugh. But if it's not the hundreds of Nigerians, or the prisoners, it's the near constant teenagers doing prank calls.
 
What we were told is that the Nigerian problem though is a problem for all relay call providers in the US. It has been for years. While I blame management, technically it's the FCC's fault for mandating that we process all calls verbatim.
 
Simply put, currently, a relay operator has to relay everything verbatim and can't hang up on any caller no mater what. If we do hang up on them, we can get fined. Yay. I hate management for not pushing the FCC hard enough on this. I hate the Deaf and Disabled telecomunications program for not listening to complaints. Nobody cares.
 
Thankfully I graduate next semester so it'll be someone else's problem.

Re:Nigerian Internet Relay scam calls

[learn fast]

You should report all of this stuff to the US Secret Service Financial Crimes Division. They handle international fraud schemes like this.

Here's their 419 site and a list of crimes they cover

Re:Nigerian Internet Relay scam calls

[Anonymous Coward]

"Simply put, currently, a relay operator has to relay everything verbatim and can't hang up on any caller no mater what. If we do hang up on them, we can get fined."

Back in college, a good friend of mine abused these lines quite a bit.

Sadly, he was deaf.

I'd get a call in the middle of the night and there was a single line message stating this was a speech to text call from XYZ and that was the only thing the operator could say outside of what the friend said.

He'd start off asking if the operator was a man or a woman and then start telling us what he'd do to this operator. And then get the operator to say quite a bit of sexually explicit talk to make it sound as though it was the operator saying this. I'd apologize to the operator and tell them that my friend is an idiot, and most of the time they would not say ANYTHING, they'd just pass on the message. The few times they'd say anything, they'd tell me they are obligated to say exactly what the deaf user was saying and they cannot deviate from this. And when I'd apologize, he'd start getting abusive to the operator.

Who says the handicapped can't be just as much an asshole as anyone else...probably why the guy hung out with me and my crew (as we were pretty much known to be jerks back then...some would say still to this day).

So even though it wasn't you, I apologize for taking part in anything that abuses folks like you that have to undertake this very serious activity so that others can communicate like everyone else (though these days, I skip the phone when I need to get ahold of Deafie and send him an email...for some reason, he is still more happy with phone calls than this medium though...and I hate the phone...hmmm).

Anonymous because my current work situation is far to politically correct to talk about this type of activity.

Re:Nigerian Internet Relay scam calls

[zakezuke]

Even if that involves the perpetration of a crime?

Federal rules require them to make the calls and keep the contents strictly confidential, even if the relay operator suspects fraud.

What a sad, sorry loophole these relay operators are in if that's the case

You've said it.

This can't be right at all. No person or agency government or otherwise can ask another person to participate in a crime

They are not participating in a crime no more so than a telephone is participating in a crime. They are relaying words on a system that's designated to allow the deaf over terminals tty or otherwise. That is their job and fuction as designated by the FCC. They are not a person but a relay... they have NO legal accountability what so ever.

Is the post office participating in a crime when they deliver those 419 scam letters? Hell no.

Their job is to read what's on a screen and to type what they hear... and that is it.

As a doctor there is NO way I can hide behind patient confidentiality and allow harm to come to my patient or others. I _have_ to report it to authorities. I also have to attempt to warn the potential victim, believe it or not. Why should "privacy" permit a crime to occur? There's something wrong there.

Why should privacy permit a crime to occur? Because people have rights. What you would sugest would amount to a phone tap for all deaf users. It's generally believed that the deaf should have the same rights as anyone else... hince this wacky loop hole scammers are using. If I were to commit a crime and the only evidence was a an illegal phone tap.... well guess what... it's not admissible.

I would agree, something needs to be done... but at the same time people like your self have to realise that this is a system designed to give the deaf the same access to the telephone network as hearing users... with the same level of privacy.

But you are right "something" needs to be done... something that protects the spirit of the system but make it easier to report and blacklist fraudsters.

Revenge on a scammer (priceless)

[alvinrod]

The first time I read this, I nearly shat myself because it was so funny.

It's the story of a man who is targeted by Nigerian scammers but gets revenge on them and actually screws them out of some money. The whole thing takes place over several months and includes pictures, audio recordings of phone conversations, email correspondence and other stuff.

It's quite long, but worth a read if you have the time.

Who is the thief?

[cowboy76Spain]

Let's see:

1.- A honest person from the First World receives an email from the empoverished nation of Nigeria. 2.- The email states that if the honest person helps someone to deal an big amount of money from the poor country, he will get a share. 3.- The honest person agrees to help in the theft, and is scammed.

Morally, I could not care less for the scammed. He was scammed because he tried to steal from someone, not because he wanted to be involved in a legal bussiness.
From anoter point of view, this is Darwinism at work: people so stupid to get involved would probably have its money lost in other ways.

Re:Who is the thief?

[cowboy76Spain]

Sorry for the editing...

for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
chalkboard.write("I will use the preview button more often\n");
}

And this is how I scammed the scammer.

[TheGlover]

And this is how I scammed the scammer. Don't you just hate those offers to buy a laptop outside of eBay from someone in Nigeria via fake money order? Yeah, me too. Check out this article on my website where I scammed the scammer! http://www.theglover.net/home/node/56

Re:Lameness filter?

[MillionthMonkey]

It appears to pass because it exceeds 3000 bytes in length. If you trim the post to 3000 bytes or less it gets rejected with the YELLING message.

Article didn't live up to my expectations

[serutan]

Dang. I was hoping his day would go more like this:

Wake up.
Go to internet cafe.
Discover all my credit cards are maxxed out and my bank accounts are empty. WTF?
See CNN report about manhunt for international child porn dealer. Hey, that's my photo! That's my address!
Notice geeky looking guys with laptops at the next table. What are they laughing at?

I've seen this done in Nigeria

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2002, I was working on a project in Nigeria for a period of about six weeks. During my first day, I stopped into an Internet cafe.

Posted throughout the room were printed notices warning the patrons that these types of scams were illegal and not tolerated. People are quite aware of this problem, and for the most part frown upon it severely.

After I took my seat at a PC, as I went about my business, I couldn't help but notice that the person sitting next to me was composing a 419 scam email. (He was using Yahoo mail.) Sure enough, he was typing in the same stereotypical message you've seen numerous times. After he clicked the "Send" button, he immediately began composing a similar message to someone else in his mailing list.

I couldn't help but steal a glance at the list of messages in his inbox; many of the incoming messages were bounces, as you can imagine, from incorrect addresses.

After I was finished, I discretely reported his behavior to the manager of the Internet cafe. The manager was young, and thanked me for the tip, but didn't confront the scammer, who was older, larger, and clearly wealthier. And the scamming continued...

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.

[ozbird]

A lot of these people are older folks who grew up in a different time.

I don't know about them being older folk; to get suckered in by these schemes, they must have been born yesterday.

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.

Slashdot frontpaged a scam site!!

[mattr]

Boy this was a shocker. Anybody notice the domain the story comes from? iwon.com may belong to askjeeves, but I KNOW I get spam from iwon.com that I never signed up for.

And look at all their (apparently lucrative) advertisers! Let's see, you can buy Hoodia, Investigate Anyone Anywhere, incredible reload the page and there are more and more banners and text ads.

What is scary is that it looks partially legit, in that my guess is they actually do run some kind of lottery (I wonder what the legal basis is for running a lottery on the net, sounds awfully lucrative). But I am pretty sure that iwon spams, and that their advertisers are bigger spammers.

So if the article is about a "cheeky" move by a Nigerian posing as the head of the antifraud department, then I find a spammer posing as a news site, carrying a news story about how spam pays off, and getting paid to do it by spammers, who are getting their page hits from slashdotters who hate spam, to be a utter masterpiece of cheekiness. My hat is off to you Iwon, you won!

Another thing I would like to note for all those slashdotters who are still laughing and unconvinced (and especially the dude who got past the lame filter and posted an all caps Bush spam message). I am guessing that any people who still get caught by these things are disadvantaged somehow.

Either they are kids with money, or depressed, or schizophrenic, or fanatically religious, or something, but they are missing something in the immune system that everyone else has. Personally I find the all capitals letters to be especially worrisome. There is most likely a large amount of mental illness in the world not being treated, or treated unsuccessfully, or the result of a temporary fugue of some sort such as normally makes people suicidal. Maybe there are even people who figure someone, anyone else could use the money better than themselves and this is a way of hurting themselves.

At the very least, it is now mainstream knowledge that just about anyone will cave in if shouted at and abused enough. I strongly believe that the shadiness of Iwon, and the sheer volume of spam with its various types of shouting, exerts a significant pressure on people. This story is about how that works really well, about how it is a natural outcome of a burgeoning, talented, but wild west style country, and about how it still pays if you walk the fine line like Iwon.com does.

It sounds like a primer that the flopped dotcommers of the next thread should have read before going through their money. One dotcom they mention closed down before using all its cash, while one scammer in the article made 250 million bucks, about 10 times as much, only gave back a tenth of it, and presumably had a nother 200 million left after the 2 years of prison! Who's laughing now?

Perfect Timing... my own examples

[CyborgWarrior]

Lol, I've been playing around with one for a little bit now, (just a coupla days actually). Here's the Convo:

Scammer:
I lost the first email, but basically he's saying he's british and I have the same last name as somebody rich who just died, so he wants to split the multi-million dollar inheritance with me in exchange for me posing as a relative.

Me:
I am interested in your offer. However, I'm not
satisfied with the percentages. I required 60% to be transferred to me as I am the one taking the risk of legal reprisal by claiming myself as the next of kin. Please contact me for further information.

Scammer:
Dear Justin,
Why have I not hear from you again I have agrred for your 60 40 for peace to reing but remmber you are taking the chance since i can not make this claim alone so let me know your mind so that we can proceed immediately.

thanks and god bless
ALFRED
(caps removed for /. filter)

Me:
I am sorry for the delay in communications, I am in the process of moving to a different place of
residence and have an unreliable Internet connection. What would be the easiest method for you to transfer the funds? I know that such services as Paypal provide an anonymous bank transfer system. If you would rather work directly with a bank account number, I can open a new account in a few days and leave it empty for the
convenience of easily keeping track of who gets what portion. Also, do you have a bank account number I can have so I can easily facilitate the immediate transfer of your portion of the funds upon your deposit of the complete sum in mine?

Scammer:
dear justin,

i am glad to hear from you today and i must say that you should try to get back to me so that we can be fast to make sure we achieve this goal..as you said if you dont have an account already you can go ahead and open another but if you have i feel there is no needof opening fresh one because all you will do is to forward it to the bank fro the fund transfer.

before i will give you the bank contact address i will like if you have to know your datas as to know whom i am trusting this fund to his care pending when i come over for the disbursement.and i will also like you to send to me your direct telephone numbers so i can speak with you.

please try and get back to me as soon as possible so that we can proceed immediately.

thanks and god bless.

ALFRED CHINEDU.PHONE 2348033621506

That's it so far. You know you could almost love these guys if they weren't scammers, they're all so friendly and accomodating! A quick note: I dont know of any paypal method for anonymous transfers, I was just throwing that in there to see if he was dumb enough to give out HIS bank account information.

Ever been tempted to respond just to mess with em?

[Solarbeat]

This guy did: http://www.yrad.com/ It takes some real talent to put together some of his replies...

Hell, I don't look down on the scammers...

[Hosiah]

They know one thing most of us don't: To ensure your continued success, all you have to do is build upon the foundation of inexhaustable human ignorance. Works in business and politics!

Well deserved

[etzel]

I have yet to see a Nigerian scam message that looks legit. People who fall for these things are too ignorant or too desperate to make a quick buck. Shame on you rednecks!

Stupid Greedy People, mostly....

[billstewart]

I really liked the early 419 scams, where the perp was claiming to be some corrupt official trying to illegally ship stolen money around, because anybody who fell for them was themselves corrupt and greedy and couldn't go to the cops because they were participating in what they *thought* was a criminal activity, though in reality they were the victim as well as a wannabee perp. Too bad the rest of us have to be inundated with spam in the process.

The newer ones are too tame - the fake lotto scams exploit stupid greedy people (but so do the government-run lotteries they're usually pretending to compete with), and the "dying cancer patient wants to do something good with the rest of her life" tearjerkers are really only exploiting the gullible, who don't deserve to be abused the way the classic 419 victims do.

a little chat

[rndmcnlly]

Heres a transcript of my chat with a scammer on Y! messenger. We had been talking via email for about a week. http://adamsmith.as/typ0/crack.txt

Nigerian Civil Rights Union

[Phoinix]

Dear Mr/Ms/Mrs Slashdotter,

We here in Nigeria are learning from you guys and we have established the first Nigerian Civil Rights Organization dedicated to defend our birth right to scam people. We are currently gathering funds and we need your help. In return, we will name a chapter of our organization after you. Please send us any amount of money you have; $5000 is a good start.

And God Bless You.

Sincerely

GW
The Nigerian Civil Rights Union

P.S. You may be puzzled by the lack of obvious spelling mistakes in this email, well fear not since an English teacher has just joined our ranks.