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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 don't think the number of victims has decreased, just the payouts.
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!
Probably for (in the broad sense) the same reasons that an undercover cop doesn't attempt to arrest the mob boss, and a spy is a diligent worker, not a slacker, at whatever facility he is infiltrating.
Journalists, ideally, are a society's way of getting and broadly disseminating certain types of information. In this case, the value of the public knowing more about Nigerian scammers is easily higher than the value of one scammer possibly getting a slap on the wrist, or even a bullet in the face. There are all sorts of situations where doing the proximate "right thing" will mean losing the broader advantage: taking down the little fish and missing out on the expose of the little fish's boss.
This is especially true in situations where the journalist is operating against the currents of official interest/motivation. If the feds, either here or in Nigera, really cared(about anything other than the highest profile and most exceptional or publicly emotive cases) they'd find it trivial to hunt down large numbers of these guys. Just get a whole bunch of spamtrap accounts, scattered randomly across common webmail services, ISP email offerings, and the like. When the inevitable submissions come, act like marks until you have enough info to track the guys down. In general, interest is limited. Thus, raising interest/awareness in the issue, and possibly helping people protect themselves more effectively, is a lot more valuable than just identifying some minor player who could have been identified already if anybody cared. (In the context of internal political reporting, the situation is similar. Corruption at the low levels is generally a symptom of much more serious high level corruption, and exists because the powers that be don't care. Raising the issue of a single corrupt cop or DMV chair warmer, or whatever, is nice; but is like trying to empty a lake with a shovel. You really want journalists to go for the core of the problem.)
My post was a combination of whoring for "funny" and impotently expressing my displeasure with Goldman's more or less perfect execution of regulatory capture.
If anything, I suspect that the Nigerian scammers are, on the whole, smart, motivated and fairly unprincipled, guys working in a tough competitive market. I have no love for scammers, and I'd be delighted to have them all hunted down; but underestimating the capabilities needed for crime, particularly fraud based crime, is just silly.
I'm sceptical: there is plenty of evidence of contact and conflict between populations, tribes, and whatnot in Africa. Further, there are known instances of innovation in the service of success in those conflicts(Shaka's career in empire building being perhaps the notable example).
I'd be more inclined to blame quirks of geography and environmental biology. Africa has a massive interior area compared to its coastline, and IIRC, the worst ratio of navigable rivers to interior area of any inhabited continent. It also has few usefully domesticated animals. There goes most of your trade, beyond seriously high value/unit weight stuff.
The continent also, because of its climate and biology, has an enormous disease load, which imposes a substantial toll on all activities of life, particularly dire for dense populations(of the sort almost always associated with division of labor, and intellectual, technological, and social development).
They're pretty much the only major financial institution to make it through this crisis without falling for the scams and without needing government money.
Thats cos THEY were the ones running scams, GS almost single handedly crushed Polish currency at the beginning of this year.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Nah, Americans are just fucking stupid. Our education system breeds retards who aren't expected to think more than what "OMGWTFBFF" text message they are going to send next. Set low expectations and that's what you'll get, so we got it. And if you think I'm just trolling or flame baiting, do some google searches and see what simple shit questions the typical American can't answer. It's shocking. FYI...I'm an American.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
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
As others have pointed out, you need to review history a bit more. For about 1200 years, the "Moors" (derived meaning "Black") were the conquerors, taking millions of europeans and middle eastern people. Some estimate the number to be approx 40 million. When the Moors sided with the Arabic people, it was very very bad for the Europeans.
Not to say the Europeans were exactly innocent. The "political" systems in place lead to slavery of the general population by the nobility. Needless to say, border disputes were anything but friendly for centuries.
It's easy to believe that the Africans were simple people running around in small tribes who knew nothing but peace and avoiding being eaten by lions, but the Euro/American slave trade triangle was just another very dirty chapter in human history, not the only one like it.
But, if you'd prefer to believe your way, that's your decision. I must quote...
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana (1863-1952)
The Life of Reason (1905-1906)
Volume 1, Reason in Common Sense - pg 284
I like to believe that humanity had a kind, gentle history at some point, but in reality there's been an awful lot of blood shed and oppression. It's important for us to know the mistakes we've made before, so we can be better in our future.
Genetics have nothing to do with behavior. All humans are the same. They do learn from their environment. Greed has spread like an epidemic around the planet, and we're seeing the collapse of that system now. It's funny that the scam artists are now complaining that their marks are all running dry.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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.