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."

Comments

Re:Why didn't the interviewer kill the guys?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.)

6 years ago

[AnAdventurer]

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.

Re:6 years ago

[C0L0PH0N]

In 2008, I did NOT get a 90-year-old retired friend's money back. He lost over half a million dollars to a Nigerian scammer! I felt somehow personally responsible, because about a year ago, he came over to my office to request that I fax some financial documents to a bank in Switzerland. I didn't even look at them, other than to notice that one was for $200,000 and the other $350,000. Four months later, he came over and wanted me to fax some documents to a "barrister" in London. I couldn't get the phone number to work, so I started checking on the address. I found it was a phony address, but nestled right in amongst "barrister row" in a suburb of London. I started checking on the barrister, "David Mark". Surprisingly, he didn't even change his name, and was linked to dozens of Nigerian scams. He DID use a "hotmail" address, which is a big red flag for a "barrister" :). I discovered this "barrister" was promising my friend to get some of his money back, but that it would require "$40,000" fee. Evil, this was just the scammers continuing to prey on this poor man who had already lost almost all his money. He had actually already travelled (I found out) to Amsterdam to meet with these people. He had the $40,000 in a money belt to give them, but the airport authorities wouldn't let him out of the airport with the money and deported him back to America. LUCKY! He could see the scammers on the other side of the airport lines, holding up a card with his name on it! That is how close he was to losing his last $40,000. I finally was able to convince him (it wasn't easy) that these were scammers, and that his only recourse was to report it to the FBI, and that he most likely would never see his money again. This was very very hard for him. And he was a retired ENGINEER, no dummy, a very smart person. But old people are vulnerable to this sort of thing. Please tell all your old retired friends about these scammers. They are real, very very convincing world-class scam artists. When they get a bite, they turn it over to their very best con artists, and your friends will be in real danger of being fleeced.