Slashdot Mirror
Nigerian Scammers Scammed
sbinning writes "At least one Nigerian scammer has had the tables turned. A website admin retaliates against the fraudsters, with hilarious results." From The Age article: "When he found a willing victim, his anti-scam unfolded in much the same way as a typical 419 scam, promising payment only after a substantial investment had been laid down — in this case the receipt of a series of commissioned wooden carvings from a local artist. With some creative photo editing, Shiver Metimbers was able to string along his quarry with claims that the two carvings sent had mysteriously been damaged enroute, the first through a mysterious shrinking process, and the second by a rogue African hamster."
Wood carving scam:
http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm
and another great one where he gets the scammer to tattoo himself:
http://www.419eater.com/html/okorie.htm
So cheating these folks should be like shooting fish in a barrel. (No surprise it's a slashdot staple.)
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
...but for all that, it looks to be worth a chuckle again. Here's the original full story (coral cached) that the age is reporting about.
So where does one get a "rogue African hamster"?
Slashdot is now officially a mirror site for Digg stories.
Nigerian Scammers try to scam nigerian-scam scammers by requiring a small investment prior sending artwork that precludes another large investment
Nature journal lied in Britannica vs Wikipedia Ask to retrac
Isn't this 'not news'? Scamming the 419ers has been around for a long time (nearly as long as Nigerian princes have been promising me huge sums of money).
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
For more examples of this, people at 419Eater and scamorama have been reverse scamming 419ers for years now. Oh and then there's my sig.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Why does the story link to a news article about the blog perpetrating this anti-419 caper? The 419eater blog itself is here:
http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm
I read several of these stories and I almost laugh to death a few times, they are great. Intelligent funny I dont know how they do it.
But the at end of the scam the scam-baiters always gloat and insult the scammers. Scammers may be bad and even dangerous people but after all that intelligence, why do they go down to this childish level?
Teasing the nobles, and rightfully so!
I don't think it is a wise decision to play jokes on these people. They are very serious about what they do. There have been at least 3 murders directly related to 419 scammers, see Wikipedia.
Here's the first story about the 419eater: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/13/164 2255
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
7 Million dollars from Queensland alone... Isn't that just mind-blowing?
There are some really really greedy and stupid people out there. It just serves as a reminder of how dumb people are and how isolated I must be from people like that for one reason or another. I really don't think I even KNOW someone dumb enough to fall for one of those scams.
Where are these people? How is it that they have any money at all? It's just staggering to think that they're allowed to vote.
It makes it fairly obvious why spamming works so well. I'd speculate that the people just dumb enough to make spamming a lucrative business are a lot smarter than the ones needed to make 419 scams successful.
It feels like standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, where you're just in awe at the magnitude of it all.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I'm truly amazed at the carvings. If they wanted they could be selling such items legitimately to the rest of the world. I wonder what an eBay auction on authentic Nigerian hand carvings would go for? :D
Wait a minute here... Is this actually a scam in the first place? 419 scams usually do not involve work on behalf of the scammer, nor a case where they send product *first* and expect to be paid.
Is there any chance that our website owner had just cheated the one honest artist in Nigeria? Perhaps the second email was in fact *not* sent by the first, but by a friend of the first who had been told of the opportunity by another who didn't see the target as a good one. (After all, the first reply did request that
If you know of an artist who could benefit from our financial help and who would be prepared to produce work for us to sell or promote then please do let me know.
It seems quite plausible that emailer number 1 took this statement at its word, and actually found one such artist. In any case, hasn't our 'anti-scammer' just managed to punish a clearly legitimately talented guy for trying to go straight? I wouldn't be surprised if our artist would really now turn to 419 scamming, given the impression of Westerners he now has, and the way in which his talent appears clearly un-appreciated.
You're telling me that I can't actually make $15 million USD by helping out a Nigerian prince escape the country and seek refuge elsewhere? They really had me going! And here I was, thinking that you can't lie on the internet!
blog & fiction: jd87
This website has been my favorite for a long time. I've played 2 of the games the author has tried with some success (I got a fake Western Union receipt from one). The more baiters out there, the fewer of these scams will perpetrate across the Internet.
Someone needs to come up with a perl script smart enough to do automated baiting. It would sell really well as a sendmail/Exchange server filter. Think of the possibilities!!!
TO PURCHASE LICESNE FOR FILTER, I NEED ACCOUNT TO WIRE MONEY TO YOU FROM LAGOS NIGERIA. CAN YOU SEND ME PHONE NUMBER I CONTACT YOU? THANKS SO MUCH GOD BLESS.
YOUR FRIEND IN CRIST
NABLOM NUGUABYA
How many scammers could a scammer scam if a scammer could scam scammers?
A question I've always wondered is why is this a Nigerian scam predominantly? Why aren't people from Liberia or Gabon or Cameroon pulling these scams. Or at least pretend to be from these other countries, so that people may think "Oh, it's not from Nigeria, it must be ligit".
Are scammers so numerous in Nigeria and other African countries that there are enough of them to get scambaited without relating their stories to each other?
Are some of the scambait stories fake?
That's too many uses of the word scambait for my liking, I am going for a lie down.
While I'm not opposed to scamming the 419 scammers, I find the tactics used in this case to be revolting.
Here's why.
Contrary to what one of the earlier posters said, there are not merely one, but MANY serious and honest artists in Nigeria, who are choosing to try and make a living in a field that is not typically financially rewarding. I worked in Nigeria, with Nigerian artists, and let me tell you from experience, many are hardworking and creative, and most importantly, THEY ARE NOT 419 SCAMMERS. They certainly do not deserve to be used as pawns in a scam.
Furthermore, many of them are quite aware of the 419 scams, and condemn them. They're quite aware that the 419 scams damage the reputation of Nigerians in general.
Visit www.nigeria-arts.net for a good example of what's out there in the world of Nigerian arts.
Bottom line: this Australian sysadmin and his "artwork anti-scam" scheme may have scammed an innocent third party artist rather than a 419 scammer.
Anyone notice that, toward the end of the scam, he writes an e-mail as a police officer? Impersonating an officer is, I believe, illegal in most western jurisdictions.
While this sort of behavior is probably satisfying, it's both unwise and unethical. It's unwise because these people are criminals that may come after you to hurt you. And it's unwise because you may be breaking the law yourself. Finally, just because someone did something bad to you doesn't make it right for you to do the same to them.
From http://scambuster419.co.uk/ A 419 scammer sends money to Gilbert! After persuading a 419 scammer to spend an entire week going from bank to bank, desperately trying to find one that would accept a succession of extremely dubious payment slips, Gilbert managed to turn the tables on the scammer: he persuaded the scammer to send money to HIM via Western Union, rather than the other way round! After a catalogue of failed transfers to the scammer which Gilbert blamed on network problems, Gilbert suggested that the scammer send him the money to check that the Western Union network was now operating without any problems. Almost unbelievably, the scammer complied. Click here to read the whole story. The cash, incidentally, has been donated to Cancer Research UK. I'm sure that the scammer would be delighted if he knew that his money had gone towards a good cause.
Letters come in hundreds of different formats. There are the well-known next-of-kin letters, the orphan scams, repentant dying sinner needs help giving fortune away to charity, tsunami victim donation appeals, fake cheque scams, wash-wash, anti-scam scams (been a victim of 419 crime? We'll get your money back for you - at a price!) and more.
More importantly: you know it's unwise and dangerous to respond to 419 mails. Are you sure your mother or cousin is aware of the danger? This is a good time to educate your family how these scammers work. Read The Ethics of Scambaiting as a brief introduction to the subject.
(I'm a 419eater member, so I'm posting as AC.)
This is probably my favorite anti-scam. The scammer, who is not poor or suffering (He has a team helping him scam people, it seems very organized), loses money, and the artist who made the sculptures got paid. And the anti-scammer is rewarded with nice sculptures.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
P-P-P-Powerbook
I'm not sure about everywhere else ... but isn't pretending to be or impersonating a police officer somewhat illegal.
Now whilst the rest of it was entertaining, doesn't this really compare to fighting spam by spamming the author ?
Anyway - was entertaining reading, if somewhat on morally dubious grounds.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
Repost this last week.
What a plonker. Only fools (and possibly horses) would fall for being scammed by Del Boy.
Was the art scholarship to attend the "Peckham School of Fine Arts"?
For the Americans amoungst us who have no idea what I'm talking about.
Once, while selling mobiles on eBay, I was propositioned by a Nigerian scammer to send him a phone in exchange for an online western union money order. (fake of course) I insisted that he set up the shipping through FedEx so that the guy would come to my house, pick up the item, and charge the shipping to him. He eagerly complied. So, I went to the FedEx website, looked up the maximum weight (50kg), and proceeded to go down to the beach with a box, shovel and bathroom scale. Once there, I filled said box with 120 lbs. of sand.
I went to the FedEx website later to see how much shipping had cost him...$1200. I could barely hold my laughter in the middle of class.
Whatever you say.
This website has been around for years.
I dunno...I find the saga of Cole and the Anus Laptops (warning: NSFW) to be more entertaining.
This guy has been on the hook for over a year now, always scrounging up the money to pay shipping for what he thinks is a load of laptop computers (paid for with a stolen credit card, way back when), but is actually a box full of broken crap.
After the first few freight baits, the baiter resorts to sending broken appliances with Photoshopped pictures of the scammer pasted all over them...and Cole is still willing to pony up for the next shipment!
They're now on their tenth go, amazingly enough.
His name is mentioned at the end of the story: "A day goes by. John senses he is being played for a fool, and decided to contact Brian Anthony with a proposition:"
C'mon -- this is hardly a troll. It may have been over-rated, but that's why I posted it without my karma bonus (as I do with all my off-topic personal replies-to-replies).
... this isn't news for nerds because it isn't even news to nerds (cite: Slashdot already reported the BBC's 2004 report on this phenomenon).
Anyway, "News for nerds, stuff that matters." It's not even fair to call this news except for the fact that some Australian rag just found out what all us nerds have known for ages: Other nerds taunt scammers by playing along and exploiting their greed to do stupid crap. I mean
It must matter to someone, but why the IT section, why not just the general bullshit section?
I wish. slashdot is now the home of late trailing edge technology culture adopters, mouth breathing neo-con droolers, and a few old (but not too old) school unix types. The really old school unix guys only communicate through quoted emails, trn, and the ocasional white paper.
So wait -- scamming a scammer out of shipping and taxes is what's novel in this case? No it's not. The P-P-P-Powerbook showed us back in ... May of 2004? Earlier? Good chance it's not the the earliest example either.
http://www.p-p-p-powerbook.com/
So to be clear -- why do I even need to say this? -- I think all the liars, cheats and scammers using the Internet should be stopped. I think it's dubious that vigilantism is necessary, and slightly ambivalent about whether it's appropriate. I'm pretty confident that it's ineffective though. Every time a nigerian gets a tatoo (or sculpts some wood!) at the behest of a bored Westerner that does nearly zero to stop this fraud from happening to others.
Since there is basically no point in scamming scammers but for one's own amusement, I don't think it's justified. You might not like flies, but are you pulling off their wings for fun? Amusing yourself and your Internet buddies at the expense of others doesn't seem terribly defensible.
To reiterate, scamming scammers is not worse than tricking grannies out of their retirement money. Scamming a scammer will not prevent scammers from tricking grannies out of their retirement money, no matter how hilarious it is.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Reminds me of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Yeah, it made TheRegister last week. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/30/419_plonke r/
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
Looks like we're victims of the dreaded 403 scam... A weird twist on the old bait-and-switch
Right, I'll shut up.
^]:wq!^M
Not to steal anyone's thunder, but here's a link from an old post of mine (Nov. 2004): http://www.lunarlog.com/archives/000114.php A little follow-up: http://www.lunarlog.com/archives/000117.php And yes - the website is in serious need of a redesign/update.
Architectural Renderings
http://yeawhatever.catholiccall.org/chadsafari/cha dsafari.html
PWNED!!!!!
Dear Sir/Madam,
It's my priviledge to briefly introduce myself and the confidential business proposal in concern. I write you this letter of request for partnership which i hope you give your urgent attention as a reputable and trustworthy businessman.
I am Mr Godswill Zabina from (Republic of Congo) Zaire, a consultant, estate and properties valued visiting holland. I was consulted by Dr. Edoman Zabina (my Uncle) a personal assistance to the Director General of the Banque Du Zaire, this is the highest bank in Zaire...
HA!
In Soviet-Nigeria, Scammer pays YOU!
-Godswill Zabina, I mean... Steve
Well, goodbye /. that was the moronic moderation that broke the camel's back. Maybe moderation shouldn't be anonymous...
I have't been as lucky however, usually when I get one of these, I ask the lawyer or a "good faith" transfer of $20,000usd into my numbered Swiss account to show that they are serious, countering that if they are indeed a law firm looking to cash in on $17 million, $20k is piddle to them...however to this date, I haven't had any takers.... is it wrong? I don't think so, is it illegal? I doubt it, at least now by US aw, as no part of the transaction takes place on American soil. Is it safe? Sure, Swiss numbered accounts do not keep owner information and they use different account numbers for deposit and withdrawl (ie you tell the scammer to deposit to your account number 123456.... if the scammer attempts to withdrawl from your account they will find that 123456 is the wrong number.... whilr the withdrawl number is actually 654321, this is just an example as an account won't have "mirrored" numbers, in fact my numbers are completly different).... so if they don't respond, no harm, no foul, if they are dumb enough to deposit money to you, then they get what they deserve, I for one don't give a fuck if they are out $20k to some Nigerian mobster, good riddance to them....
These aren't even street-level thugs. If they were tough-guys, they'd find a way to get to a rich community in whatever country they could, then they'd just strong arm some loot. The very essence of this crime indicates they're not tough. The other reason it's not dangerous is the distance we're talking about. Is someone going to travel around the globe to punch you for making him look ridiculous on a web page? Rather unlikely. Especially not a poor guy from Nigeria.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
'Nuf said.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
Please be gentle with this, it's a beginners hosting plan. :)
http://www.joebertvision.net/fun/wu-tang-clan.png
That Admin torched my icebreaker & tried to shyster me via PM.
Moral of the story, Wu-Tang Clan aint nuthin to fuck with !
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I hope not.
This guy has doen the same as all other scammers. I have no symphaty for him and I hope his case gets also looked at by criminal investigators.
Hi all, I would just like to address some of the questions and misconceptions about scam baiting that I have read on this forum.
In no particular order:
The ethics of scambaiting. It can seem to some that it is in fact the scammer that is the victim in this game. But if you spend nearly two years as I have wasting the time and resources of 419 scammers, you will very quickly learn that there is no depth to which they will not sink in order to get what they want. I have posed as dying, sick or unemployed characters that have responded to there mails.
When I say that I don't have the money to send, as I need my limited funds to pay for life saving medication, they will mail (usually aggressively) to say that the money must be sent and that I can pay for all the care I need, once this non-existent deal is complete. You will be urged to commit any crime or go to any lengths to get the money they want without the bat of an eye.
Scambaiting Innocent victims. The way we harvest their emails makes this virtually impossible. I have a special account that I use to catch them. The method basically consists of leaving your catcher email address in certain guestbooks and the 419 mail will come flooding in. I receive about 50-60 419 mails a day, and in over two years have not received one non scam mail to it. *Cough* ( Excluding penis enlargement and Viagra spam of course.)
I can assure you that any baiter worth their salt would be quite thorough in researching anyone they had suspicions about and would drop anyone they thought was innocent. We are only interested in scammers.
Baiter safety. There are various email providers that hide your IP address. All the information we give is made up. This includes any bank details we supply. A common misconception is that they somehow syphon of all the money from your bank account, once they have the account number. This is not true, it is simply asked for as they think that anyone willing to hand out this information is more likely to go along with the scam, It is a test of the malleability of the victim.
Victims that have handed out their real home address and phone numbers have been threatened, and scammers from west Africa do have associates in various countries around the world that can be sent around to your home for a less than friendly chat. The cases you have read about of people being killed are those of genuine victims that were lured over to Nigeria or South Africa. To the best of my knowledge no scambaiter has ever been harmed.
If I can sum up. It's all about free will, The scammers like their victims are free to walk away at any stage of the game. I have got a few to come clean and own up as to why that do this. The usual excuse is that they are poor and their Government is corrupt from top to bottom, so why shouldn't they be? Or they are on some kind of anti colonialist mission to get retribution for the years of western interference and exploitation that they have endured. I think they are just crooks on the lookout for easy money. I have no real sympathy for most their victims either. Although they will appeal to a victims good nature as well as their greed. They deserve anyone's sympathy.
In regard to the carving and other similar baits. These are fun to read, but by and large are not representative of what baiting is about. The day to day lot of a baiter is trying to confuse a scammer or waste as much of his time as possible so as to keep him away from catching out the unwary.
On the bright side the scammer probably had to pay a struggling local artist to do that fine piece of carving for him, so the result was positive all round.
Nigerians have a life expectancy of 47 years, a per capita GDP of $1400, and 60% of the population below the already low Nigerian poverty line. Compare that with a life expectancy of 77 years, a per capita GDP of $42000 in the US, and 12% of the population below the US poverty line--most of even those wealthy by Nigerian standards. 47% of Nigerian exports go to the US, so we are benefitting greatly from their natural resources. The average age in Nigeria is 18, meaning that many young people are going to have a hard time finding reasonable work, even if they have managed to learn how to read and write and use a PC.
In the face of such disparities, it's easy to understand why many Nigerians wouldn't think twice about attempting E-mail scams: their view of us is that we have way too much money and it won't hurt us if the dumbest of us part with some of that money. You're probably spending more on electricity for your PC than these people have to live on.
Get some perspective. If one of your neighbors were pulling a Nigerian scam on you, play your little games with them, but don't screw around with the lives of people that you should be feeling compassion for. The way to stop the flood of Nigerian scams is for the rich nations to stop contributing to poverty in Africa, not to play games with desparate people.
So its technically a criminal fraud. The 'victim' is unlikely to make a criminal complaint.
The concern I have is that this type of thing may be putting money into the 419 scammers pockets rather than hurting them.
There are successful 419 scams but at this point the sheer volume of attack spam means that the pool of potential marks is pretty thin.
The original gangs now run a scheme involving buying goods on EBay with fake cashiers checks, asking for part of the money paid to be forwarded to a 'shipper' after it clears. Its the same advance fee scheme but in a different presentation.
I think that the scammers sell 'franchises' for their original scam, setting people up with all the tools they need to do this stuff for an up front fee. Then they take further commissions from the would be scammers for moving money if they are successful, taking photographs of them holding a fish on their head, etc. Getting carved art samples is just another service to provide and make money off.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
How many scammers can a canny scammer scammer scam if a canny scammer scammer can scam scammers?!
I'm surprised I'm the first to mention this, but Cote d'Ivoire is NOT Nigeria. Well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that so much of the slashdot population and the Western world in general know so little about Africa. 419-ers in Africa are no different from the con artists you can find in any corner of the world. Gullible people are taken advantage of every day. Unfortunately, Nigeria seems to have emerged as THE one and only place scammers inhabit... even the P-P-P-Powerbook scam in the UK is considered a Nigerian scam (wtf). Anyway, yeah, Africa is a huge continent with more than one country. Keep that in mind.
It would be interesting to bounce 419 scams to other 419ers and see if they can scam each other.
Start off with a list of 419er email addresses from scams and everytime a new 419 email comes in forward it to all the others. With luck, one of the scammers will fall for the others scam.
But the Nigerian scammers long ago realized that people had heard about Nigerian scams, so they started claiming to be from Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, South Africa, Benin, and a variety of other African countries, and that doesn't even count the ones pretending to be from Netherlands or UK. Some of them are operating from Nigeria, so they're probably Nigerians; many are from cybercafes in Netherlands or free email servers in ZA, so they might or might not be actual Nigerians, but it's still the Nigerian 419 scam even of they're not. Also, Cote d'Ivoire was a French colony and Nigeria was a British colony, so the Nigerians are more likely to have the language skills to scam English-speakers.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Something happened between Saturday evening and now. The site requires registration in order to read the thread. Dammit, and I was just about to get to the 5th shipment! :(
As other people have commented, there's no way to tell whether the real woodcarver was paid a standard local wage for his work, or paid less or nothing with a promise that he'd be paid when the mugu paid the scammer. If *I* were a local artist in Nigeria, I'd probably want to take cash upfront rather than trusting somebody in the 419 business to pay me later. Certainly the real wage would be a lot less than the scammer hoped to receive - it was probably less than the FedEx bill. You can't ask the real artist, because there's no way to know that the person you're talking to who _claims_ to be the real artist isn't the scammer, but there's some hope.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And the saga continues... When I last attempted to access www.419eater.com I got the following response:
/.
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.34 Server at www.419eater.com Port 80
And also the forum.419eater.com server seems to be in a rather overloaded or non-responsive state.
This has all happened since the anti419 article was published on
I wonder what has happened to the servers?
Regards,
Aalfred