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419 Emails From A Cultural Perspective
dasboy writes "The LA Times has an article entitled I Will Eat Your Dollars about Nigerian 419 scammers that presents some of the cultural basis for the crime. They follow some young men in Lagos who toil over computers all-day and long into the night to snag a new victim. They even have a fight song entitled 'I Go Chop Your Dollars.'" From the article: "Scammers, he said, 'have the belief that white men are stupid and greedy. They say the American guy has a good life. There's this belief that for every dollar they lose, the American government will pay them back in some way.' What makes the scams so tempting for the targets is that they promise a tantalizing escape from the mundane disappointments of life. The scams offer fabulous riches or the love of your life, but first the magha has to send a series of escalating fees and payments. In a dating scam, for instance, the fraudsters send pictures taken from modeling websites."
http://www.419eater.com/
An informational website that helps you scam the scammers.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
"This type of scam, originally known as the "Spanish Prisoner Letter" [2], has been carried out since at least the sixteenth century via ordinary postal mail.">>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_f raud
Cripes the Ukranian dating site scams have been around for over 5 years now. I remember a friend getting sucked in on that at work paying for "fees" and then paying for "english lessons" for the girl he really liked. he was eventually bilked out of $5000.00 before he got a clue.
The nigerians are way behind in their scams.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But the scammers aren't the poor people living in those conditions! On the contrary, they're the rich and educated Nigerians -- if they weren't, they wouldn't have the knowledge and resources to perpetrate the scams (e.g. speaking English and having enough money for Internet access). See Section 5 of this for details.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You mean the other woman in the computer lab?
I know that this may sound like a fantasy equal to those in the 419 scams but when I was an undergraduate two decades ago, there were LOTS of women in the computer labs. The women who worked on computers back then were mathematics majors, accounting majors, and a few who were working toward a degree in computer science. The number of women in computer science was small (2% of the total in the department), but when you added in all of the other majors using the VAX system for their classes, the number was probably closer to 40%. The university I attended has a strong business school and the accounting majors have been recruited nationally for three decades. By the early 1980s, the population of the accounting department more than 50% women.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
These guys, while scumbags, have not killed anyone (yet).
Sure about that?
I have once been on one of those online trading sites (like e-bay) and someone offered a single new laptop for about 700 USD. It seemed nice enough, still in the box and the price was very good. I suspected something about the price but replied anyway. The dude said he was selling it because he was a yuppie from the UK and he ordered the wrong product but couldn't get refunded.
I myself am from another EU-state so it had to be shipped over. He told me he was going to use this and this shipping company with 3-way system (escrow service) and take all the costs on him.
The site seemed legit, even had some sort of certificate of a known site for e-commerce (it said on their site) but before I agreed I checked the "click here to certify" link which took me to another site saying the certificate was correct but not quite the site of the issuer. Checking the real site of the advertised certificate the site was not in their lists.
I contacted that certificate site to verify and they said there was no certificate issued for the site so they were going to do the necessary steps. I mailed the dude saying that I wanted to use another escrow service because the site was abusing the logo of certificate issuer and that I contacted authorities and never heard from him again, his e-mail doesn't exist anymore etc.
I was almost tricked into such scam and I understand that some are being scammed buying christmas gifts for their grandchildren. But some promises are indeed too great (like the nigerian scamming letters) and should trigger something inside any sane persons head that there is something fishy.
My advice to anyone with online business: if it looks, hears or smells fishy, then check everything being said and promised until the bottom!
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I disagree with your following statement:
It's funny how we seem to get most upset when it's people who have almost nothing doing the scamming. Yet when rich folk do scamming, like the Savings & Loan scandal, Enron, Worldcom, and so on, people don't get so upset.
Do you know how many people lost their jobs, lost their entire retirement savings account, and had to start from scratch from the Enron scandal? If you not, I'd recommend you to watch: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
I don't know about others, but I've always felt these nigerian scandals as a joke and anyone that falls for it is an idiot. But I've truly felt sick to the stomach at what some of these corporate scandals involved. There were hardly any signs for any of the employees or anyone affected by the scandal to see it coming, especially for the lower level guys.
But here's a fact of life, most people just won't care until they've been affected by it too, thinking that'll never happen to them.
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Is that America is a society of 'Caveat Emptor' - let the buyer beware.
We've got laws and a social order that reviles scamsters, conmen, and thieves BUT there is also a sort of Robin-Hood admiration for someone with the chutzpah and intelligence to pull this over on someone. Hollywood has been fascinated by these characters for decades: Paper Moon, The Sting, The Grifters, etc
Let's be totally honest: when you read about some grandma or naive intarweb n00b being taken in on one of these scams, your gut reaction isn't "that darn naughty criminal!" it's "WTF? Who could be STUPID enough to fall for this nonsense?"
It's financial Darwinism. Frankly, if someone with $200,000 to blow loses it to a Nigerian scammer, it's practically justified. If they were a different moral character, they'd blow it on drugs, gambling, the Church, or any number of the millions of expensive tarpits lying around for the unwary.
-Styopa
An organized crime ring in some country goes into a low-income district, and finds a few mildly educated people who are short on cash. They loan them some money, and then tell them they can pay it back by pulling a few 419 scams on some rich americans they've got lined up who deserve it.
The scammer sends out the scam to the email list provided, and eventually hooks a sucker or two.
At this point, a number of things may happen, but the scammer is usually not allowed to actually handle any "real" cash themselves; organized crime steps in and takes it from here.
In some cases, the scammer is told to lure the victim to an airport in some country. The crime ring has someone (sometimes even the scammer) set up to meet them, and then has someone else "vanish" the rich foreigner and take their money/ID. The money/ID is then used in the crime ring's other operations, usually to move between countries or launder dirty goods/money.
One thing I've never heard of in these cases is what happens to the hired scammers; one could conjecture that they might also be "vanished" at the end of a job, or it could be a situation where if they get results, they're added onto the payroll permanently, and if they don't, they're pressed to repay the loan some other way and things go on from there.
Of course, there are also the educated teenagers who hang out at internet cafes, and do it for kicks. Usually you can tell the difference, as the hired scammers tend to use one of a limited set of form mails, wheras the bored teens get a bit more original, although they usually end up leaving out something necessary to make the scam actually work.