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

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

[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

[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

[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

[Tablizer]

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

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.

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?

Re:In other news...

[Gerzel]

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