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Times Are Tough For Nigerian Scammers
The Narrative Fallacy writes "The Washington Post reports that online swindling takes dedication even in the best of times but succeeding in the midst of a worldwide economic meltdown takes patience, resolve, and hard work. 'We are working harder. The financial crisis is not making it easy for them over there,' said Banjo, 24, speaking about Americans, whose trust he has won and whose money he has fleeced, via his Dell laptop. 'They don't have money. And the money they don't have, we want.' US authorities say Americans — the easiest prey, according to Nigerian scammers — still lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year to cybercrimes, including a scheme known as the Nigerian 419 fraud, named for a section of the Nigerian criminal code. 419 is cemented in Nigerian popular culture. and the scammers, known as 'yahoo-yahoo boys,' are glorified in pop songs such as 'Yahoozee,' which gained even more fame after former secretary of state Colin L. Powell danced to it at a London festival last year."
I only wish the reason was because our education was getting the job done.
If these Nigerian scammers were any good, they'd be working at Goldman Sachs, not pulling penny-ante internet operations...
Africa is a shit-hole because it is infested with niggers.
I would have suspected that Americans might have fallen prey more easily. Hard times can lead to more desperate measures.
Or maybe people are turning off their Internet service...
Dark Reflection
Hello I am a Nigerian judge Mumbasa Mfune III. I am collecting funds to create a task force to reclaim lost monies in Nigeria.
If you have lost monies in Nigeria, for the low donation of $2500, I can reclaim ALL lost assets.
Please contact me immediately at Judge.Mufune@yahooze.ng
How did this interview take place? Why did the interviewer not do the world a favor and kill the guys on the spot, or at least identify him to authorities that will shut them down?
I'm in charge of 35 million in US bailout money and I feel your plight. I can't use government money to pay for fund transfers due to red tape but if you could arrange for a 5% transfer fee I can forward the money. Thank you my friends!
I wonder if any nigerian has ever tried it? By the way, about the 419's, check out http://www.419eater.com/ Scambait is great!
Africans? They build scams to sucker the rest of us. That is their "contribution" to humanity.
Does genetics explain the differences in human accomplishments?
Evidentally, it's even possible to run low on fools. Or at least fools who have not yet been separated from their money. P.T. Barnum must be rolling in his grave.
There must be some kind of famine or something in Nigeria, I've received about 15 emails in the last 3 months, all from people telling me their father/brother/uncle/etc. had "caught death". Terrible!
And to make matters worse, they can't get the money that's rightfully theirs from the banks! Honestly, something should really be done about this.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Well, once this recession is over they'll have their business back, people being none the wiser. It doesn't matter what experiences humanity goes through. There will always be at least a small fraction who is unequivocally stupid.
Bailout! Just like the banks and insurance companies, which take your money, perhaps it's time to bail out these scammers. While they may be from a foreign nation, we can't forget the trickle down effect.
Scamming works, even for schemes widely known from years. Be an scammer and will be pretty rare that you get caught, in your country will make songs about you, and even the Washington post will put your name in big letters. And money flow so much that even in this troubled economic times is still profitable, even with the amount of people doing it.
A bit remembers me the amount of people buying what is offered by spam, and making it still a profitable activity, but this one goes some levels deep into the illegal realm.
Who should I make the check out to?
Who should I make the check out to?
My name is 'Shakrai' but my good friends call me 'Cash' :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Anyone else see the poetic justice in some back-jungle Shaman fleecing these guys out of their hard-swindled cash?
$300 for mojo powder...probably ashes from the fire he burns his extra cash in...Turtles on a string. I love it.
Hours of hilarious reading, pics and audio- these guys get very creative. Freight baits ROCK!!
http://www.thescambaiter.com/
But in these tough times, the scammers said, they are relying more on a crucial tool: voodoo. At times, Banjo said, he has traveled six hours to the forest, where a magician sells scam-boosters. A $300 powder supposedly helps scammers "speak with authority" when demanding payment. A powder, rubbed on the face, reportedly makes victims viewing the scammer through webcams powerless to say no.
Did he say the scammer used a Dell laptop?
We must ban the use of Dell laptops immediately!!
Scammers having a hard time in this economic climate? Boo-fscking-hoo.
Let's play Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'll be Pestilence.
Google, Yahoo, msn, all you guys...
1. Figure the expense of Nigerian spam
2. Ask Nigerians to stop
3. ????
4. Profit
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
to these fucktards you don't deserve to have any.
Now, if only we could block them from responding to craigslist ads, or kijiji ...
Futurama. What an awesome show.
My mom says I'm cool.
How can you have sympathy for anyone who falls for this crap? In Nigeria 419 is viewed as a game. Anyone who plays (poor innocent Americans) is just greedy themselves. How dumb do you have to be to think that you can get something for nothing ? I hate the fact the Nigeria is given a bad rep for this, but Americans are xenophobic to anything especially from that country "Africa". Just wait until American realize Nigeria has a large Muslim population.....
It is stories like these that make it impossible for businessmen like me to transfer millions of dollars to their rightful owners.
YOUR HELP IS URGENTLY NEEDED!
...419 Eater. My favorite is the Harry Potter handwriting scambait (search in the page for "after the call").
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
I read this days ago.
in 2003 I recovered $15,000 for someone who lost their money to a web based computer scam. It was not easy and I didn't kill anyone (at the request on my client). Africa is a dangerous place. I have been doing stuff for a while, the odds of you getting all your money back are pretty much 0%. In fact I would say I did not get my clients money back, I probably got them someone else's money.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
When I read the article, the thing that struck me was that the scammers are so desperate, they trying voodoo majic to boost their believability. One guy has a live tortoise hanging around his neck to boost his mojo. Sounds like a market ripe for a new product idea:
Your sma11 unit sales got you down? Bulk up that member ship!
Girls find you more attractive with our herbal honesty reproduction enhancer. Get more faith-time from those gullible Americans with new ultra power Premier gold medal deluxe Truth Be Told powder. Distilled from the pulverized testicles of tobacco company lawyers, this is genuine disingenuity at it's most potent concentration. Guaranteed to have them eating out of the palm of your hand, you will be invincible in email encounters.
http://gxzyxkqkdjh.cn/
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Imagine being tricked by a con artist named Banjo. I wonder if he has a friend Kazooie.
I refer the Nigerian (and any other scammers) to one of my favorite Eagles tunes entitled "Get Over IT!
If you mean this : Media misunderstanding on GS and zloty it was more like media not making real research on a subject and repeating hearsay. IOW business as usual, as media these day , except for a few rare exception, are glorified parrot.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
By the way. My Uncle recently passed away, it is a very sad time. On the bright side he left me a fortune of $110 dollars. Unfortunately I do not have a dollar denominated bank account. Could somebody please send me a cheque for $1 dollars? which i need to open the account. Once the money is transfered from my uncle's estate I will send you back a cheque for $20M.
Yeah, that's how all the kids decide which songs are hot nowadays.
Secretary's of state need to be more careful, lest we have another summer like that time Warren Christopher danced to I Saw the Sign by Ace of Base.
skin color?
They just target a different segment of the population now. When times are good they seem to focus on the not so bright who are slightly greedy with a little cash to spare. When times are tough they seem to focus more on the more vulnerable and desperate. To give an example I have been looking for a new apartment, and have been using craigslist to look for rentals. They still have deals that are too good to be true, and not just bait and switch deals from unscrupulous realtors. I ran across one where the rent was very low, but the owner of the property was out of the state and would have to mail me the keys, application, etc, after I mailed an application (that would require my ss #, bank info, etc.) and money order (not check) for doing a credit check.
I can kinda see being taken by some scam artist where there is some face-to-face contact. The way the "pidgeon drop" works is that the con artists drop some envelope full of money behind you, the con calls your attention to it "is this your money you dropped. Part of how this work is that an accomplice walks by posing as a "disinterested third party" to build up the crucial network of "trust, but distrust" so you get sucked in putting up "earnest money" until the "rightful owner is attempted to be located." Yes, the thing works on the mark's greed and the notion of an impromptu conspiracy, with the mark not knowing two of the three parties are in collusion, but it probably also works on the idea of a person "getting sucked in" by events and not thinking quickly enough on one's feet about what is happening and what should be happening.
The Nigerian thing, however, I just don't get. The Nigerian thing is as hackneyed a cliche as "In Soviet Russia", "All Your Base Are Belong to Us", and ". . . Profit!" I mean, what planet is a person living on who falls for it?
I could even understand if there was some variant to this game. Say, the "Nigerian dude" contacts you by spam e-mail, and you go "ha, ha funny, the dude doesn't even know English", and then it would be followed by an another e-mail "This is Agent Sam Smith from the FBI, and we need your cooperation tracking down a Nigerian con-artist." But they don't even try anything as basic as the "supposedly unrelated third party." It is completely transparent and utterly unsophisticated.
Are some people compensating for what they think is racial bias against Nigerians that they are willing to help the Nigerian dude to demonstrate they can act against their prejudice? Is it just a compulsion that grips a person to respond, kind of like a Simpson's episode where Homer knows he is being hypnotized and croaks out "must . . . not . . . hit . . . reply . . . to . . . spam . . . e-mail!" I mean, just who are these people who reply?
A wish for mod points.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One Laptop Per Child got him started in the scam business, then he passed his OLPC to a newby scammer and bought himself a dell.
Just what Africa needs... hip hop culture. Great.
Coccotti: Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I'm a Sicilian. And my old man was the world heavyweight champion of Sicilian liars. And from growin' up with him I learned the pantomime. Now there are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give him away. A guy has seventeen pantomimes. A woman's got twenty, but a guy's got seventeen. And if you know 'em like ya know your own face, they beat lie detectors to hell. What we got here is a little game of show and tell. You don't wanna show me nothin'. But you're tellin' me everything. Now I know you know where they are. So tell me, before I do some damage you won't walk away from.
Cliff: Could I have one of those Chesterfields now?
Coccotti: Sure.
Cliff: Got a match? Oh, don't bother. I got one. So you're a Sicilian, huh?
Coccotti: Uh-huh.
Cliff: You know I read a lot. Especially things that have to do with history. I find that shit fascinating. In fact, I don't know if you know this or not, Sicilians were spawned by niggers.
Coccotti: Come again?
Cliff: It's a fact. Sicilians have nigger blood pumpin' through their hearts. If you don't believe me, look it up. You see, hundreds and hundreds of years ago the Moors conquered Sicily. And Moors are niggers. Way back then, Sicilians were like the wops in northern Italy. Blond hair, blue eyes. But, once the Moors moved in there, they changed the whole country. They did so much fuckin' with the Sicilian women, they changed the blood-line for ever, from blond hair and blue eyes to black hair and dark skin. I find it absolutely amazing to think that to this day, hundreds of years later, Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. I'm just quotin' history. It's a fact. It's written. Your ancestors were niggers. Your great, great, great, great, great-grandmother was fucked by a nigger, and had a half-nigger kid. That is a fact. Now tell me, am I lyin'?
:)
PS: Please direct all credit (or scorn) to True Romance.
Happy people make bad consumers.
to claim something. Less so to explain it: exactly how was anything stolen?
So does this mean we will get less entertainment from the lads courtiesy of the great folks at www.419eater.com?
I have noticed that it is harder to engage in this activity. I used to enjoy wasting as much of these cat's time as possible and then arranging to meet them in London and never show. Then, when I get the response, "I was greatly disappointed to see that you never arrived for our meeting," I would come up with some other excuse like a sick family member or something or other and arrange another meeting. I would do this until I heard from the scammer no more. Might be that these guys share information because my email no longer gets 419 scams. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
....suppose one could make use of botnet software to infect and either identify or eliminate the PC's (or whatever they're using) of these scammers? I mean, if they can do such things to the rest of us, why not return the favor?
The new scam is "I make $159/day on Google! Find out how with Fast Google Cash!" You want scams that thrive in recessions, there they are.
Fools and their money being parted?
"Please help me, I just engaged in an act which even the lowest member of the primates would know was illegal and now I am upset because I was ripped off?"
The fundamentals of the law is that you must limit your own liabilities.
The mythology of the 419 scammer is similar to the street corner drug dealer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics. Most of them barely earn enough money to get by since they have to pay tributes to all of the criminal elements above them and most of them live with their moms.
Certain slashdotters may experience some affinity with the last sentence.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
*hmz* That sounded funnier in my head
Invita Invidia
I will only consider it "tough times" if the number of 419 scammers of dropping so fast as a result from hunting parties or all kinds of accidents that they suddenly become an extinct species. before that moment, life is too good for them.
Privacy is terrorism.