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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"?
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.
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.
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.
How many scammers could a scammer scam if a scammer could scam scammers?
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.
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
It's unwise because these people are criminals that may come after you to hurt you.
This would require that the criminal have a means of tracking the individual. In many cases, scam baiters use proxies when receiving deliveries, and only then if they actually accept any deliveries from the scammer.
And it's unwise because you may be breaking the law yourself.
To what law do you refer?
Finally, just because someone did something bad to you doesn't make it right for you to do the same to them.
The purpose of scam baiting is not to do something "bad" to the criminal. It is to waste the time and resources that would otherwise be used to victimize someone.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
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.
MOD PARENT DOWN
Nigeria has a notable income level when compared with Africa? Maybe if you only look at the GDP of the entire country. Take a look at the GDP per capita:
Nigeria: 1400
Botswana: 10,500
Namibia: 7,000
Zimbabwe: 2,300
Mozambique: 1,300
Angola: 3,200
Congo: 1,300
Gabon: 6,800
Uganda: 1,800
Sudan: 2,100
Chad: 1,500
Ghana: 2,500
Cote d'Ivoire: 1,600
Algeria: 7,200
Libya: 11,400
Morocco: 4,200
Nigeria does have a GDP of 174.1 billion.. but it's hardly "notable":
Algeria: 233.2 billion
Morocco: 138.3 billion
Sudan: 85.65 billion
Ethiopia: 62.88 billion
I'm not going to go through the whole list..
BTW:
South Africa GDP: 533.2 billion
Spain GDP: 1.029 trillion
So South Africa alone is 1/2 of Spains output.. so that also disproves your claim that Spains output is 4x all of Africas..
Perhaps you should do your research instead of telling other people to do it.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Yeah, it made TheRegister last week. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/30/419_plonke r/
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
You are suggesting, then, that I can be legally bound to submit payment to an individual, even if that individual's request for payment is known to be fraudulent.
Up to the point of the guy getting the tattoo or sending the carvings, all that has happened is that you promised to send money in return for some action by the other person; the other person hasn't committed any fraudulent act yet, and it's only a supposition that their original request is fraudulent (rather than, say, naive or a joke).
Why is having a scammer 'brand' themself -- of their own free will, believing that such actions will enable them to commit an act of fraud -- a "bad" thing?
Because, whether achieved through deception or brute force, it's still a form of vigilante justice. Furthermore, when all is said and done, you have done injury to a person that hasn't actually done any injury to you--the other person might be a naive teenage kid that wouldn't even have gone through with the scam.
These anti-scam efforts violate two basic principles of the way we administer justice: punishment and retribution is up to the justice system, and with few exceptions, we only punish actual crimes and not merely intent.
Your second example has not been demonstrated to have occured.
Good. In fact, those two particular scammers do look like they deserved what they got. That doesn't make the actions of the anti-scammer any less reprehensible, dangerous, or unethical. We have sleazeballs fighting sleazeballs here.
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
I am a scambaiter at 419eater and can tell you that your assumptions are quite incorrect - they have connections abroad. I know cases in which Nigerian scammers showed up in Houston, London, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Bangkok and Madrid (we get them on webcams by agreeing to "meet them" on a specific location). The ones that e-mail you are the lowest level idiots in Internet cafes but once they think they have a victim on the hook they pass you on higher up in the gang and you notice a significant improvement in their English.
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.