Slashdot Mirror
Interview With a Convicted 419 Scammer
An anonymous reader writes "Scam awareness website www.scam-detectives.co.uk has published a two part interview with convicted Nigerian 419 scammer, 'John.' 'John' talks about his experiences of scam victims, how he gains their trust and convinces them to part with their money, and how he would go back for another 'bite' after the original scam, posing as a law enforcement official who has apprehended the scammer and recovered the funds ... for a fee, of course."
I had the same thing happen with my car stereo. I ID'd the stuff at the station (it was recovered a week after it was stolen) and never heard from the police again. Trying to get in touch with anyone who could deal with the problem at the PD was a pain (they insisted evidence was *never* held for more than 30 days and treated me like I was crazy), and when I finally got a hold of the evidence room officer, she couldn't give me a straight reason as to why they were still holding on to it.
Years have passed and I now live in a different city, and sometimes I wonder if my $2000 of stereo equipment still continues to sit in that evidence room. Bullshit.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I'm a news reporter, and recently saw the other side close-up. Over a period of months, a local woman had sent cash several times to a man who claimed she'd won a multi-million dollar sweepstakes. A couple of times, she called the cops, who came and talked to her, and tried to convince her it was a scam. Then she'd send more money. When she ran out of money, the scammer told her to buy jewelry on a credit card, and sent that "to be appraised." She was told the up-front payment was a "tax formality" and simply couldn't come out of her winnings, and that the jewelry would be returned to her when the transaction was completed. They also insisted she use FedEx or UPS, not U.S. Mail.
After they got the jewelry, they called and told her that a "courier" had flown into the local airport with her cash, but they hadn't been able to get a hold of her that day. So, they had put the money in a storage locker there, where it had run up another $1,700 in storage fees (in 3 days). When she went to put more jewelry on her credit card, the jeweler became suspicious, and also tried to convince her it was a scam.
Around this time, the woman called the police yet again. Working with the police in the city where she'd sent the jewelry, they raided the address and recovered her stuff. A local cop (who had been assigned to her case, and had been working with her for months) told her in person that the jewelry had been recovered and was being returned. A few hours after the police raid, the scammers called the woman, and told her they were sending the jewelry back to her (and that local police would be delivering it, to ensure it arrived safely).
Then! They told her that there had been a miscommunication, and the tax rules required the jewelry be appraised independently in two different states. The reason they were sending the jewelry back to her was that as the owner, she was the only one legally allowed to request an appraisal. The police returned her jewelry, and she sent it to the new address!
I talked with her several times over a period of weeks, corraborating everything with the police. Throughout that time, she was scared that:
1. If I wrote a story saying it was a scam, she wouldn't get her money
2. If I wrote a story saying it was a scam, the guys might come hurt her.
I, and the police, finally just gave up. People can be so blinded by greed (and dumb to start with) that they'll force this whole thing to make sense.
A cop here in São Paulo told me a story about when his car was stolen. He got a call from the police (a different kind of police, but I don't want to go into the differences) saying his car had been recovered. He got to the place where the car was being kept pretty quickly and did the right thing: he took pictures of it. Because it was the end of the day and the processing to release his car could only be done by people who had already left, he could only get it the next day.
When he went back the next day, the car had been stripped. The stereo and a bunch of accessories and decorative items (nice hubcaps, for example) had been removed. He got access to the chief (delegado) and showed him the photographs from the previous day. The chief made an announcement that he wanted everything restored to that car within an hour or heads would roll. The next time the car's owner saw the car, it was as it had been the previous day.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Has anyone ever done research on the psychology of the victims? There are people who are compulsive gamblers, and people who can't say no to a salesman. It's easy to say that the people who fall for the scams are greedy, but, as was pointed out in the interview, some people are suckered in by hard luck stories too. Even then, something must be going on to overwhelm the victim's common sense, something that ends up being self-destructive, and also destructive for their families. I wonder if any psychologist has ever tried to set up some online pseudo-scam just to locate people who are susceptible to scams so that they could be studied the way, for example, that addiction is studied.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)