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

Why not link directly to the actual content?

[GeekLife.com]

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

Dont screw with these people

[affliction]

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.

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]

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

[mcpkaaos]

From the website (but not the article):

UPDATE - June 2006:

Just to give some additional information on John Boko. As I write, I have been in contact with "John" posing as a fellow scammer looking for work. John has just offered me a job as just one of several of his European representatives to help cash and transfer payments from scammed victims for him. I was offered between $2,000 and $3,000 per month just for the simple job of gathering victim's payments together and forwarding the money into his bank account.

Re:The morality here is dubious

[suckmysav]

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".

As for the GP suggesting that this might be a case o ripping off "the one honest artist in Nigeria", again, if you properly RTA you would learn that this all came about after the fake "Derek Trotter, Director; Trotters Fine Arts" replied to a standard 419 scam letter with something like "Sorry I'm too busy giving out $100K art scholarships right now to help but do get any artist friends you might have to contact me".

Two days later the same scammer replied back under a different name claiming to have read about the non-existant "Trotters Fine Arts" on the internet and was interested in applying for a scholarship. From there it was game on, the scammer paid an artist to produce the works thinking some naive western art dealer would in turn pay huge money to foster the scammers non-existant artistic talent. He also ended up paying the freight costs to ship the pieces as well.

It appears this 419 scammer has just learnt a lesson that he should already well know, that unchecked greed will make people do the stupidist things.

Scamming Nigerian Artists is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Scamming Nigerian Artists is wrong

[FroBugg]

If you read the entirety of the original website, he claims at the bottom to have gotten in touch with the scammer through another alias, gotten the name and contact info of the artist, and confirmed that the artist was paid for the pieces (though he wasn't able to find out how much).

Re:Nigerian?

[dfjghsk]

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.

Re:oh, bullcrap

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.