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."

Comments

You can't cheat an honest man...

[pedantic bore]

... or so the saying goes.

So cheating these folks should be like shooting fish in a barrel. (No surprise it's a slashdot staple.)

Not news...

[David Rolfe]

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).

Re:Not news...

[Rachel Lucid]

Wood carving is only different and distinct because it requires an actual loss on the artist's part, as opposed to, say, a drawing that could be scanned in prior to delivery, or even a digital art image that could merely be emailed. Choosing WOOD in fact is part of the scam AFAIK, because it requires that the weight of said carving will incure significant fees, while allowing for a medium that is still doable to the artist, because metal requires a significant investment beforehand as well as a worse weight, and any other material (say, clay) would be too easy and light. Also, while proving damage to clay is certainly easier, there's also more chance of damaging the artwork (which ruins the point of the scam).

Amazing

[osgeek]

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.

And yet they scam...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:And yet they scam...

[stevey]

I can't see many people sending payment via paypal/whatever to Nigera - what with the reputation that country has (fairly or not) for scams.

The morality here is dubious

[FhnuZoag]

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.

Re:The morality here is dubious

[RyoShin]

This is exactly what I was thinking upon reading the article.

I went to the 419Eater page for it, and all the e-mails appear to have come from the same person. So, it could be that he throught that $25,000 was worth it, and actually went through the trouble of having someone make these (which, from the looks of it, were not bad.)

However, there is always the chance that he had a friend genuinely interested in doing artwork. Considering the area he was supposedly writing from, it wouldn't be unknown for the friend to not have e-mail or regular PC access.

The work he received might be considered theft, or conspiracy; after all, he was promising a chance at money, and someone was submitting their artwork for a chance toward that money (when there was none.) It would be the same as selling some guy raffle tickets at $5, when there is no actual raffle, let alone a prize.

Then there was the fact that he posed as a police officer, which I believe is a felony here in the States.

The little note at the end somewhat consoles my worries, though; it looks like the guy contacted him again to work in a scam ring.

Don't get me wrong; scamming 419 scammers isn't inherently bad. The longer we can string them along, the less time they have to go after innocent people, and the more wary they are about making actual contact. But things like this cross the line, in my opinion; getting money or items from them is no better than them trying to get items or money from us. After all, if someone breaks into your house and steals something of yours, you can break into their house to steal it back (or steal something else!)

To fight the wrong and win, you cannot drop to their level, lest you become what you fight.

Re:The morality here is dubious

[harlows_monkeys]

Actually, the artist and the scammer were not the same person. If you properly RTA (oops, this is slashdot, sorry) you will find that the scammer paid the artist to produce the carving in the hope that "Derek Trotter" would ultimately pay up big time in the form of a large "art scholarship".

Uhm...the article Slashdot links to says no such thing. You are thinking of the article that that article links to.

Anyway, there is still a potential problem, as we don't know how much the artist was paid. Remember, the artist is dealing with the 419 scammer, who might not be honest with him (I doubt these people confine their dishonesty to their dealings with Europeans...). He might, for example, have told the artist about the scholarship, and offered to help the artist get it, if the artist would produce the required works cheaply (say, at materials cost) and give the 419 scammer a big cut if he got the scholarship. So, we may very well have a legitimate artist who was scammed in this thing.

Re:The morality here is dubious

[suckmysav]

1) He didn't actually promise to send him money. He promised to evaluate the guys work with a possible sponsorship to follow. Yes, he did lie but it was not a lie of anything like the audacity of the general 419 scam, where many people have been biled out of thousands of dollars.

2) He didn't take any money from the guy, who himself has later claimed to be "earning" US$45K per month from his scamming business. In fact the scammee apparently approached "Shiver Metimbers" regarding him joining his 419 scamming organisation as a collector.

3) The guy lied about who he was and his connection to the original 419 scam letter. He lied about having "read about Trotter Fine Arts" on the internet (and no, I am well aware that the WWW is *not* "the internet" and that technically speaking reading an email is reading something "on the internet" but in a colloquial context such as this it is generally accepted that when somebody says "on the internet" they actually mean "on the web". If not the guy would have said "my friend showed me an email . . .")

4) I have no idea why anybody would even bother trying to defend these scumbags.

Re:The morality here is dubious

[birge]

You need to RTFA with a more critical eye. There's no proof that the artist was paid. My guess is that the scammer promised to pay the artist when he got his money. I agree with the original poster; this anti-scammer guy (I've actually been following him for a while) is going way too far, to the point where he's probably causing harm to people not otherwise involved. The saddest anti-scam he did was getting a scammer to get a bunch of local artists to draw beautiful copies of a map (incredibly labor intensive). I'm quite certain that some poor guy in Nigeria who wasn't scamming anyone probably put a lot of work into nothing in the hope of eventually getting paid. True, perhaps the ultimate blame is on the 419er, but this "Shiver" guy is definitely a man with an obsession and no sense of proportion.

Re:The morality here is dubious

[beaverfever]

1) Shiver Metimbers made a clear indication, with full intention to deceive, that if the mark sent goods there was potential for financial gain. Degrees of audacity are irrelevant.

2) Shiver Metimbers did take material goods, instead of cash. Both have value. The mark's salary claims are irrelevant.

3) Shiver Metimbers lied about being someone he isn't and he lied about a company which doesn't exist. So both of them are liars; that does not vindicate the lying of Shiver Metimbers.

4) I don't know why anyone would defend Shiver Metimbers either. I am more interested in retaining a respectable level of morality, for example resisting the use of torture even when the bad guys use it, and resisting the suspension of civil liberties in times of adversity, even when the bad guys don't respect such things. You can't claim to be on the moral high ground if you're behaving no better than the bad guys.

Re:The morality here is dubious

[RealGrouchy]

However, there is always the chance that he had a friend genuinely interested in doing artwork.

Perhaps (and others have replied to this), but the purpose of scambaiting is to create enough indirect strain on the scammer (usually through wasting their time) to make it less worthwhile.

In the event that there was a genuine artist involved, then he/she would have learned the lesson to not trust that scammer. In fact, if the scammer had told them "I'll pay you as soon as I get money from this guy," and never paid the artist, then there'd be someone local to the scammer who got ripped off, and can use Nigeria's convenient [lack of a] justice system to add another dimension of pressure.

That said, taking an eye for an eye is a pretty stupid idea if it's illegal in your country but legal in theirs. Best to stick to wasting their time than impersonating police.

- RG>

Re:The morality here is dubious

[rbarreira]

a) the people who actually do get ripped off by scams dont benifit from anti-scamming, unless you believe anti-scamming cuts down on the amount of scams in the first place

Of course it can help to reduce the number of scams quite a lot, it wastes the scammers time who would otherwise be searching for more victims.

Re:Dont screw with these people

[rolfwind]

Living in fear is not the way to live. Besides, one murder was the victim taking it out on a random (?) Nigerian - so the danger isn't one sided. The second murder was a man who went to Nigeria pursuing his money. I think, like terrorism, while these crimes are tragic, that the statitists are low actually experiencing them. But incidents like this make me think of Twain's essay "The Damned Human Race."

OTOH, many Nigerian scammers think westerners are stupid and assume we are all easy money - they deserve to be taught otherwise with these pranks. I won't live in fear of thieves.

From the wiki you linked to.

One American was murdered in Nigeria in June 1995 while pursuing his lost money.[8]

In February 2003, a scam victim from the Czech Republic shot and killed Michael Lekara Wayid, an official at the Nigerian embassy in Prague.[9] [10]

A Greek man was murdered in South Africa after responding to a 419 scam.[11]

Re:My Scammer Story

[craznar]

Once, whilst walking through town, I was approached by a cheap crook who demanded I give him all my money. I insisted that I not, and managed to make an escape.

Later I managed to find out where he lived, so I broke into his house and stole his plasma TV (rich bastard).

I went to the police later and told them the story, and we laughed together at how justice had been done.

Answers to Q's on scambaiting.

[baitboy]

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.