Nigerian "Scam Police" Shut Down 800 Web Sites

Sooner Boomer writes "Nigerian police, in what is named Operation 'Eagle Claw,' have shut down 800 scam web sites and arrested members of 18 syndicates behind the fraudulent scam sites. Reports on Breitbart.com and Pointblank give details on the busts. The investigation was done in cooperation with Microsoft to help develop smart technology software capable of detecting fraudulent emails. From Breitbart: 'When operating at full capacity, within the next six months, the scheme, dubbed "Eagle Claw," should be able to forewarn around a quarter of million potential victims.'"

Comments

I'm a nigerian prince

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like to help me transfer millions of nira to me? You will be well paid!

Re:I'm a nigerian prince

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Nigerian policeman. We caught a bunch of spammers and think you may have fallen victim to one of them. Can you provide your banking details so we can verify you are not affected? Thanks!$$

Finally! It's about time!

[ad454]

Finally! It's about time that international police and anti-crime resources put the same effort in stopping online cross border crime that they do for offline!

Kudos to Microsoft for helping. Heck, I would accept help from Satan himself, if it reduce the spam and online crime.

This isn't going to help

[JoshuaZ]

Unfortunately, humans are quite stupid. Even smart people are often stupid outside their area of expertise. I know someone professor at a major university who almost fell for one of these scams. It is hard to draw the line between ignorance and stupidity but as long as ignorant or stupid people exist unethical will try to take advantage of them. And they'll just find new ways of doing it. More education is probably the key. But even then, they'll just modify the scams accordingly.

Re:This isn't going to help

[mc moss]

Was it this professor at Harvard who sent 600k to nigerian scammers?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/31/harvard_prof_scams/

Re:This isn't going to help

[Artraze]

Of course scams won't go away. But even if we accept that, should we just allow scams to continue unchecked? At least arresting scammers helps raise the "price" of the operation...

Also, for what it's worth, being scammed isn't about stupidity. The (Ponzi) scams that have been in the news tricked people whose sole area of expertise was investing, and they did it quite well (they had the millions to put in to these after all). Granted, dumb/ignorant people are easier targets, but they also don't generally yield as much per person (see pervious).

Re:This isn't going to help

[causality]

Even smart people are often stupid outside their area of expertise.

That's the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Re:This isn't going to help

[phantomcircuit]

A cherrypicked group of humans?

Yeah it turns out that some people are much smarter than the average person. Shocker.

Re:This isn't going to help

[DNS-and-BIND]

Scams have always been around, and they have nothing to do with 'stupidity'. This is a conceit of our modern age, where we are desperately anxious to call other people stupid so as to relieve our anxiety that we might not be smart by comparison. Rather, it has to do with scammers who have made a study of human nature (the profession is ancient and goes back to the dawn of time). Calling people who fall for scams 'stupid' is not correct, calling them 'greedy and trying to screw the conman' is much more correct. Consider how many people in the current 'intelligent' audience would fall for the following:

You take an ordinary pack of 52 playing cards, spread them face up on the table, and offer to bet your victim that you can beat him at a game of draw poker, nothing wild, in which you both draw your cards from a face-up deck, taking any cards you wish. The game will be played according to standard rules except that you and he can help yourselves to any cards in the face-up deck both in putting together your initial hand and on the draw. You claim that your opponent will be unable to beat or even tie you even though each of you sees what the other man holds and even though you will allow him to go last.

The procedure, you explain, will be as follows: You will draw five cards from the face-up deck for your hand. Your opponent will then draw any five cards he wishes from the remainder of the deck to form his hand. You will then discard any cards you wish and draw cards from the remainder of the deck to complete your hand. Your opponent may then discard nay or all of his cards. He may take any cards remaining in the face-up deck to fill his hand. If he beats you, he wins the bet. Even if he only succeeds in tying your hand, he still wins. In order for you to win the bet, you must end up with a better hand than his.

Since your opponent gets to go last both on the deal and the draw, it would seem a sure thing for him to at least tie. After all, the best you can end up with is a royal flush, and he can tie that by taking another royal flush in a different suit. (Remember suits have no rank in poker.)

Actually, you have a mortal lock on this one if you employ the following strategy: In selecting your initial hand, take the four tens plus any other card. Your opponent will either give himself a higher four of a kind jacks, queens, kings, or aces or he will take a straight flush. (Note that the highest straight flush he can make is a five through nine of one suit. Your four tens preclude his building a royal flush or a straight flush higher than a nine.) Either way, he has you beat for the moment.

You now discard three of the tens and your odd card. Use that one ten to build the highest straight flush you can. For example, if he holds four aces, you give yourself a king-high straight flush. If your opponent holds a straight flush, you build a royal flush around the ten you hold. Now its his turn to draw, but there is no way he can make a straight flush as high as yours because you have killed the other three tens among the discards. Of course, your strategy will work just as well if, for some unaccountable reason, your opponent initially draws some other hand than the ones suggested above.

Letting your opponent go last, which seems to guarantee a tie for him, actually robs him of any chance of winning the bet. Take out a deck of cards and experiment for a couple of minutes and youll see that all your adversary can do is come in second best.

In my younger, more adventurous days, I often used this scam on a mark I had badly beaten at poker, if he still had any money left. As soon as he started bemoaning his bad luck, I would say, What do you mean luck? Youre the worst poker player Ive ever seen in my life. Its a wonder your mother lets you out of the house without a note pinned to your chest. You couldnt beat me at poker if I let you run through the deck and pick out your own hand. I would then pause as if suddenly getting an inspiration, and say, As a matter of fact, I bet you reall

Re:This isn't going to help

[Anonymous Coward]

I know some people here don't like xkcd, but this felt relevant

Re:This isn't going to help

[Darkness404]

I suggest we look to the roots and foundations of 'evil' and how we can circumvent its expressions in life; most cases indicate that 'money' should be destroyed and new cultures and ways of existence need arise.

Ok, so how are we supposed to do that? In 2009 we still have finite supplies of everything, if I want a ham sandwich I can't magically produce ham by speaking "create ham", it isn't even digital where if you have one piece of ham you can make almost infinite copies without damaging the original ham or using any other parts.

You know it is your culture that taught you to be jealous of polygamy.

Um, I don't see how I'm "jealous" of polygamy, its hard enough work keeping one woman happy, let alone three or four.

It is your culture that taught you to put common man at opposition.

What are you on? In case you haven't looked at the natural world (as I'm assuming you are basically saying you think humans are nothing more than evolved animals) every animal wants to dominate all the other animals. We as humans at least can do it civilly without much bloodshed and still maintain a society where just about everyone can live without fear of hunger or their safety. Sure, we can't all afford 50 inch plasmas, a Ferrari and 5 Core i7 boxes, but in general most everyone in at least a semi-free society will know they are going to be able to eat tomorrow.

It is your culture that prioritizes the individual over community.

Yeah, and look at how well the cultures that prioritized the community over the individual. You know governments such as fascism like Nazi Germany where they felt they needed to kill a few "individual" Jews for the sake of the "community" and don't even try bringing in "modern science" because that is what they manipulated to get the German public to at least tolerate it. Other governments such as communism that end up being corrupt to the core, breed dictators like Joesph Stalin, people who don't care if their people starve like Kim Jung-Il, Which country would you rather live in? North Korea where the "community" comes first, or in the US which is "individualistic" where I can be pretty sure I'll have food to eat tomorrow, the day after that and the day after that and I can be confident I can have medical treatment whenever I need it (even if I might have to pay for it later), and I can at least have a few freedoms (though they are being taken away day after day by the government).

Very little in what is wrong with humans can be attributed to nature: nurture is where we go wrong.

Are you just a troll or have you not seen nature? In nature life is brutal, short and in general not much fun. While we have leisure time to think, to ponder and to have fun, in nature you always have to be perpetually looking out against predators, gathering food, and making sure that the members of your own species don't decide to kill you. If you have a sickness no one cares, you just die in pain. You mean to say that the "natural" way of doing things is "better" because we don't have this "evil"? I'd prefer to be sent these spam e-mails than to spend every day fighting to survive.

Re:This isn't going to help

[Joren]

Unfortunately, humans are quite stupid.

Compared to? Cats? An alien race you know of but the rest of us don't? A cherrypicked group of humans?

Just try getting between a cat and a plate of tuna. They are fiendishly inventive... I have a cat that, while not necessarily socially intelligent, was quite clever at solving problems. He might fit in here at Slashdot ;) - One day when I was in my last year of high school, the cat, while wondering why in the world he was not getting petted and catered to, decided it was time to take matters into his own paws. Having carefully observed me using the computer over a long period of time, he figured out how to reset my computer - never mind the fact that the front panel had been completely removed and the reset "switch" consisted of a button deeply recessed into a 7mm opening in the grating, of which there were dozens to choose from. He had to stick his claw in that specific hole, and *bam* - there goes an hour of work. He seemed to think that without that pesky English paper on my screen, I'd have more time to pay attention to him. He got a lot more attention than he bargained for that day...

Re:This isn't going to help

[Archangel Michael]

Money is not good, nor evil. Money is just a tool to exchange goods and services. Goods are limited, and so are your services. Money is the only tool we have to express value in something. If everything has the same value, then it is worthless.

The only time people are exploited in cases like this, is when GREED overcomes LOGIC and REASON, i.e. MONEY FOR NOTHING (and chicks for free).

People who are scammed like this deserve it. It is a cost of stupidity. Stupid should hurt.

Re:This isn't going to help

[Tablizer]

My cat tried to achieve the same results by installing Vista.

Re:This isn't going to help

[abarrieris5eV]

Ok, so how are we supposed to do that? In 2009 we still have finite supplies of everything, if I want a ham sandwich I can't magically produce ham by speaking "create ham", it isn't even digital where if you have one piece of ham you can make almost infinite copies without damaging the original ham or using any other parts.

Did you try "sudo create ham"?

Re:This isn't going to help

[rohan972]

Money is not good, nor evil.

I disagree. Money is inherently good but like all good things has the capacity to be used for evil. It is an expression of value. As you say, it is a tool to exchange goods and services, service generally also being taken to be a good thing.

Re:This isn't going to help

[syousef]

Let's just see how stupid you are shall we?

I have a cat

That's strike one.

Having carefully observed me using the computer over a long period of time, he figured out how to reset my computer

Very doubtful. I think you're anthropomorphising - strike two.

He had to stick his claw in that specific hole, and *bam* - there goes an hour of work

Went an hour without saving work. Strike three.....you're outta here!

Re:This isn't going to help

[causality]

Is it? Even wise people are ignorant out of their area of expertise.

You have entirely missed my point. Wisdom is not about categories of factual knowledge. It's about knowing and understanding yourself. Our society so thoroughly fails to appreciate wisdom and so greatly overvalues cleverness and so few people are independent learners that I am actually having to explain this.

It's a mundane, lower-level interpretation of what I said, and it fails to capture the full essence of it, but it could be rephrased this way: wise people know when they are not informed enough to make a good decision. So if it isn't their "area of expertise" (even if they DO subscribe to such a self-imposed limitation) then they know they are ignorant and they know that they need to correct their ignorance before making a decision. That's because wise people know themselves and appreciate both their strengths and their weaknesses, both their capabilities and their limitations.

Fools, by contrast, assume that they know more than they actually do. This is usually because of what you might call arrogance but also happens because of plain old poor judgment (which is itself a weakness that can be remedied). Because they recklessly and haphazardly overestimate their understanding, they get screwed by such scams.

Note that fools can otherwise be very clever, in that "high IQ" sense. They can accumulate vast amounts of memorized factual and procedural knowledge. They can even be the foremost experts in a specialized field. This alone does not cause them to make good decisions. To see the surprise that people show when smart people do stupid things, you'd think that this were some big mystery rather than the simple and self-evident observation that it actually is. Unfortunately, this is another thing that I would not have to explain if the difference between wisdom and cleverness were more widely appreciated in our society. The result is that we as a people are very good at complicating simple matters.

So before responding, the wise might research that person e-mailing them and take steps to find out whether he is in fact the Nigerian prince that he claims to be. They might do a Google search and see if other people have also received similar unsolicited e-mails, which would quickly inform them about the nature of the scam. What they would not do is respond from a position of ignorance to an unknown third party about a financial matter without first performing some due diligence. Furthermore, the truly wise are honest people and for that reason, they do not expect to earn vast amounts of money for little or no work on their part and are rightfully suspicious of such offers instead of titillated by them.

Now I know that's a rather dry response, but the beautiful simplicity (by comparison) of my original statement gets lost in even the best of explanations.

Love those letters

[EdIII]

I rather enjoy getting those letters. The last one I replied that I was extremely interested but that I had recently had a dispute with my Internet Service Provider and my access to email would be shut down soon. I would be more than willing to help them if they could send $98.43 to Time Warner Cable referencing account number ################.

There are other variations. Such as I can help them get the money out of the country but I need more money to pay my lawyer to settle some estate disputes. Buy me a ticket to Nigeria and I will come there personally. My rich family members think this is a joke and I have been cut off from the family money but I can show them if I can just get to Nigeria and show them that this is real.

My record so far is stringing these guys along for 2 weeks. They finally give up frustrated. I actually had one of them write me back asking to be left alone and stop sending him emails.

Re:Love those letters

[Hurricane78]

I think you would fit in well with this group: http://www.419eater.com/ ^^

Noooo....

[u4ya]

Some king just died and his cousin needed my help and promised to repay me half a million dollars for my bank account information, which I sent of course, because I'm not an idiot. But just how the hell am I supposed to contact him now?

In other words....

[Rod Beauvex]

In an effort to make their products look good, Microsoft paid off a bunch of Nigerian police who have known about these people for years and didn't really care.

Ok....

[Darkness404]

Technology cannot eliminate human stupidity. What person doesn't know not to go double clicking on random EXEs, install random Active X controls, etc. yet the number of virus infested Windows boxes shows that most people don't follow that advice. Seriously, how many people think they can make millions by following the directions in these e-mails?

The success of these e-mails is a testament to human stupidity in and of itself.

Re:Ok....

[Suicyco]

They aren't stupid, they simply don't know any better. Most people barely understand the concept of things like "executable file" and "activex control" if at all. They just click away, because thats always worked for them in the past. Its not the user that is at fault for everything that happens, even they are the cause. You can't expect everybody to understand what a trojan is just because you do. Some of the malware is very clever, I recently cleaned a slew of corporate computers infected with tons of crap from some users clicking on what appeared to be legitimate security warnings from windows. These popups can easily fool most people. I took care of it by installing good antivirus and antimalware but a lot of small businesses simply have no clue. They buy a computer, it comes with norton for 60 days, they plug away and don't think twice. Two years later they are infected to all hell and have no idea why. I don't fault them, what about Dell and the likes putting trialware of CRITICAL components onto these new systems? They should have bullet proof antivirus on the system for like, as part of the purchase price. The entire PC market is messed up in that regard. In the long run, it helps sales, because people will buy new computers once their old one becomes slow and worn out, like they are tires or something.

People aren't "stupid" just because they don't have your level of computer expertise.

A lot of talk about "stupidity

[countertrolling]

The "victims" of these scams aren't as stupid as they are greedy. Combine the two, and you'll understand how Wall Street works.

Re:A lot of talk about "stupidity

[countertrolling]

I like what you're saying, but the "smart" ones recognize its strength and work to exploit it (i.e. by scamming) to the max. Greed produces both winners and losers.

Re:In other news...

[Gerzel]

What? You mean that some of those scammers were ACTUALLY Nigerian? I had always assumed even that was fake...

Re:Finally! It's about time!

[icebike]

Finally! It's about time that international police and anti-crime resources put the same effort in stopping online cross border crime that they do for offline!

Kudos to Microsoft for helping. Heck, I would accept help from Satan himself, if it reduce the spam and online crime.

Well, I suspect that even though the tech is not fully deployed yet, these sites were already showing up as scam sites in Firefox and the latest versions if IE.

I suspect the Nigerian police snarfed up the already useless sites and shut them down in a halfhearted show of being proactive even while on the take. Probably took the opportunity to get rid of a few competitors as well.

These guys have been operating there for so long that only a corrupt police force could have missed them. There is plenty of evidence these guys are less than squeaky clean: http://hubpages.com/hub/Nigerian-Police--bribe-and-fraud and http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=76458 etc.

Wow! Shut down 800, did ya!?

[buss_error]

Well, there goes about a quarter of the scam email I see on my servers.

Per HOUR.

DEAR ESTEEMED SIR OR MADAM

[adageable]

I AM A LOWLY CIVIL SERVENT RESPONSIBLE FOR CLEANING UP AFTER THE GLORIOUS OPERATION 'EAGLE CLAW' AND HAVE DETERMINED THAT YOU HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY DUPED INTO GIVING $ 77, 056 USD TO NIGERIAN SCAM OFFICER. AS A RESULT OF THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT TIRELESS SEARCH OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE, I AM HAPPY TO SAY THAT WE WILL BE RETURNING ALL OF YOUR MONEY.
PLEASE FAX US ALL OF YOUR CURRENT BANK ACCOUNT AND IDENTIFICATION DOCUMENTS TO 01-234-419-23222 AND WE WILL IMMEDIATELY BEGIN TO PROCESS YOUR INFORMATION, AS WELL AS ADDING A $5,061 DOLLAR REWARD FEE AS REQUIRED BY THE NIGERIAN FEDERAL COURT. TO FACILITATE THE PROCESSING OF YOUR INFORMATION, PLEASE INCLUDE THE ROUTING NUMBER, ACCOUNT NUMBER, AND SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR PRIMARY BANKING ACCOUNT (FAILING TO INCLUDE THIS NUMBER WILL DISQUALIFY YOU FROM CONSIDERATION FOR THE $5,061 REWARD).

YOUR FAITHFUL CIVIL SERVANT,
MOGWAH MUBUGASHS

Re:DEAR ESTEEMED SIR OR MADAM

[adageable]

You know, I have no real idea. Wasn't thinking about it at the time... that's the secret to beating the system ;-)

Eagle Claw? EAGLE CLAW?

[Shag]

That's no eagle claw, it's just the way Wikus's hand grew back, you insensitive MNU clods.

Re:Microsoft's scam detection strategy

[supernova_hq]

Explains hotmail...

Re:Finally! It's about time!

[Nefarious Wheel]

I suspect the Nigerian police snarfed up the already useless sites and shut them down in a halfhearted show of being proactive even while on the take. Probably took the opportunity to get rid of a few competitors as well.

Never discount the possibility that a different organisation can offer a higher bribe.

The Nigerian letters are a scam???!!

[mookiemu]

Aw man! That must be why the Honorable Mr. Ngoti Mbutu is not returning my calls. He happened to know my uncle, the esteemed Doctor Alfred Mookiemu, who unbeknownst to me was rich and was sitting on $9,764,546.56, when he was killed in a car crash with his whole family. Fortunately for me Mr. Mbutu was managing his account at the time of his death and found me in the International business archives. He is taking a great risk by contacting me to help me get my uncle's money. All he asked for in return was my bank account numbers, my personal info, and my Social Security number! Sadly, I haven't heard from him since I gave him my info. Gee, I hope the little fella is OK. He seemed like such a nice guy with his endearingly bad grammar and spelling.'

Re:In other news...

[BKX]

Yes, they even have a strange rap subculture over there, kind of like gangsta rappers in the US. Here's a youtube music video of one of the more popular songs. The name of the song, yahoozee, is the name the Nigerians give to rich scammers. Oddly, the yahoozee seem to buy only American after they steal American money (hell, the entire song is in (very bad) English; they even stole our language.).

800 Web Sites ?

[Zedrick]

This doesn't make any sense at all. The second article says it's 800 email addresses, not websites. I doubt the scammers has many websites hosted in Nigeria, if needed they usually set up accounts on European webhotels where neither Nigeria nor the Microsoft Empire has any form of jurisdiction.

In other words: 800 email addresses somehow shut down. Wow. I bet it will be really hard for new scammers to open new accounts on gmail or yahoo.hk, or set up a new somescammingbank.co.uk at some cheap webhotel using fake names.

Re:In other news...

[jonadab]

> (hell, the entire song is in (very bad) English; they even stole our language.)

They didn't steal the language from us. They got it from the bloody limeys.

Incidentally, so did we.

> Oddly, the yahoozee seem to buy only American after they steal American money

American goods are uber-cool throughout pretty much the entire third world. Buying American stuff is a form of conspicuous consumption, a banner that says, in effect, "I can afford all this, look at me, I'm wealthier than all y'all, ha ha ha."

One notable exception is automobiles. The US makes a lot of cars, but the most popular conspicuously-expensive cars are of European manufacture (Rolls Royce, BMW, Mercedes Benz, etc). Oh, and cigars, of course, come from Cuba.

So if these "yahoozee" are buying American cigars and American luxury cars (e.g., Cadillac) then they might be making a statement about America. Otherwise, they're just making a statement about their own level of affluence.