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Nigerian Scam Artists Taken For $33,000
smitty777 writes "An Australian woman who was being used by a group of Nigerian scam artists stole over $33,000 from the group who employed her. Her bank account was being used to funnel the cash from a dodgy internet car sales website. Irony aside, it makes one wonder how these folks ever got the nerve to go to the police with this matter. Those of you wondering, this article offers some answers to the question of why so many of these scams originate from this area."
Those of you wondering, this article offers some answers to the question of why so many of these scams originate from this area.
There was also a Fortune article on this from years ago. It's hardly anything new. Anytime you combine poverty, internet access, and police/political corruption--you're going to get fraud. That's true in Nigeria. It's true in parts of eastern europe. It will be true about anywhere someone who makes $1 a day gets internet access and can suddenly interact with people who make $50,000 a year. Welcome to one of the downsides of a flat earth.
Bet it pays a helluva lot better than trying to farm on unfertilized poorly-irrigated soil with some crappy non-GM seed that Sean Penn gave you.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
.. you end up in jail and the money isn't yours either.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
The Nigerians didn't get scammed. She merely diverted the funds stolen from the unfortunate Australian car buyers for her own use.
FTFA :
The car buyers who were ripped off reported the matter to police, who traced the account to Cochrane-Ramsey.
From the fucking Summary:
Irony aside, it makes one wonder how these folks ever got the nerve to go to the police with this matter.
Because they didn't.
Oy vey!
She didn't steal it from the scammers, she stole it from the victims and then just didn't forward the money to the scammers like she was "supposed" to. This isn't a story of comeuppance or anything... just someone other than Nigerians ending up with the money. And of course the Nigerians didn't file the complaint... the victims did.
...why so many of these scams originate from this area.
I asked that same question of a missionary who had just come from Nigeria. His answer was that there is a culture there of "you're a clever individual if you can get the other fellow to pay for your lunch." For what it's worth...
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
She stole from people who were defrauded on the car sales website, not from the Nigerians. They never lost a penny, as it was not their money to begin with.
The Nigerians did not go to the police. The ripped-off car buyers did. (Smitty777 obviously did not read TFA before writing TFS.)
Some of those offers to send me money could be real?
No actually, it doesn't. Poverty is not a reason for scamming. It might be a reason for stealing food or other things. Scams show a particular mindset, and that the most common type of Nigerian scam has originated elsewhere is irrelevant. What matters is how many people do it, and the information I have is that scamming is commonplace in Nigerian culture, so they do it to themselves, not just to others with a 'lot' of money outside Nigeria. This means poverty has nothing to do with why they all seem to be Nigerians. Though I suppose, being a Nigerian, seeing some scammer from your country make a lot of money, might influence you to do the same thus giving a flood of such people, but as I said, it seems to be commonplace behaviour in Nigeria itself.
She didn't steal anything from the scam artists because the money they had was stolen anyway. In fact, as far as she knew, she was stealing from a legitimate company.
"not all scams originate in Nigeria"
"according to Wikipedia"
"not all Nigerians are criminals"
"Disclaimer: This column is not a master's thesis"
I tried to scam some scammers once, for far less money. I can definitely see how that would feel like a huge triumph.
I had gotten a response to an ad looking for a roomate. This fuckwad strung me along for days before revealing that they intended to pay for the first months rent and security deposit with a travelers check and "could you please cash it and forward the balance to....".
Oh I was fuming. I put the room back on the market, and continued with the scammer as if nothing happened. I told them the first set of travelers checks never arrived, even though they had and i already verified with the post office that they were fake.... then I got the second set....and admited I knew it was a scam.
At this point, things took a turn for the hilarious. Immediately he switched over to admitting it was a scam and....trying to recruit me to help! He claimed he needed a mailing address in the US, and needed someone to send out packages....claimed he would pay $500 per package of letters!
So of course, I told him I would do it but I needed the money up front...fully intending to keep the money and spend the next decade gloating over how I scammed the scammer.... he even told me he could get counterfit bills.... which got me thinking how fun it would be if this all resulted in my getting to report him to the SS.
Of course, the whole thing broke down when he wanted to talk on the phone....and I wasn't willing to give out my real phone number. I suppose he already had my address so it hardly mattered, but, I didn't want harassing calls either.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
What matters is how many people do it, and the information I have is that scamming is commonplace in Nigerian culture, so they do it to themselves, not just to others with a 'lot' of money outside Nigeria. This means poverty has nothing to do with why they all seem to be Nigerians. Though I suppose, being a Nigerian, seeing some scammer from your country make a lot of money, might influence you to do the same thus giving a flood of such people, but as I said, it seems to be commonplace behaviour in Nigeria itself.
It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that it sounds a lot like the story I heard recently about Jews kicking out and disowning family after "three strikes" at "making it rich with the help of the family and the Jewish community".
Also, how they orchestrated the World War Two just so they could get Israel and chase out the Muslims from Palestine.
You know.. A tad bit racist with a dash of cultural and other kinds of ignorance.
...a group of Nigerian scam artists
While this is technically correct (the scam artists were from Nigeria, therefore they were Nigerian), this scam was very different from the typical "Nigerian Prince" scam. It sounds like they were just running a fake online car dealership, and got two people to pay for a car based on pictures on the internet.
...it makes one wonder how these folks ever got the nerve to go to the police with this matter
If you're talking about the scam artists, they didn't. The article makes it very clear that it was the people who tried to buy cars who went to the police, which is why the Australian woman is the only one on trial--she's the only one who was in the local jurisdiction.
... why so many of these scams originate from this area.
It's possible that there are a bunch of fake online car dealerships originating in Nigeria, but I think it's more likely that the author of the summary thinks this is about a Nigerian Scam. If they had actually read the article, they wouldn't be making that mistake. I understand that slashdot is all about not reading the article, but is it too much to ask that submitters read the articles they submit?
Not that I give any weight to your story, but I think if the only thing that stood between you making 500$ was a telephone number, anyone would go buy a 30$ burner with 10$ of minutes on it.
She took money they would have stolen and kept it for herself. She's no better than they are.
Rather than "Why are Nigerians such scammers..." perhaps we ought to ask ourselves - "what has gone wrong that causes people to do these things.
....because when people do sleazy things is because they must be a victim of something? Is it inconceivable that a person may rip someone else off because it's the easiest way to get big money?
What I gather the GP is saying is that in Nigeria, it's culturally accceptable to scam people.
Like in other societies is culturally acceptable to treat women as property or charge interest on loans.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
IMNAL, Illegal contracts are still contracts. i.e., if you sign an illegal contract, you can’t benefit by squelching on your end after you have received payment. So she committed fraud twice. Once by helping the scammers and then again be defrauding the scammers.
There have been cases where people who have signed illegal contracts have had to uphold their end of the bargain. (But they don’t get their payment, police seize they assets, etc.)
That being said, I don’t think the Australian police are going to try to extradite some quasi-anonymous fraudsters – but they could.
Is why the women needed the Nigerians in the first place. She was doing the legwork. Little the Nigerians could do to find her.
Then again, the smart criminal is a rare breed.
We don't live in Shouldland.
This works as follows: People buy something which never gets delivered. Money from the sale goes to a finance agent (the woman in this case) and then is transferred to the criminals with Western Union or some other money laundering service. The finance agent will always be the one that takes the fall. The difference here is that this woman was actually guilty, not just naive.
So, no, she did not take the money from the Nigerian criminals, she took their place in the scam. And yes, I hope she gets punished for that.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm sure a lot of fellow /.'ers have heard of scambaiting (ie: scamming the scammers, but it usually is for fun or to make a point, rather than make money off the scammers).
The link won't load at this moment sadly, but here is an interesting story from the BBC a few years back where one guy works as a professional scambaiter. I would NOT recommend this kind of thing in general, as you end up being on the shitlist for some less than reputable people, to say the least.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3887493.stm
In short, the guy convinces the scammers that he has no money, but he can steal some expensive stuff from his employer and send it to them if they pay for shipping and give him $50. So, he convinces them he's shipping tens of thousands of dollars worth of stolen Cisco equipment, when he's really shipping them e-waste, used electronics, old monitors, broken microwave ovens, and stuff that you typically have to pay to recycle or drop off at the dump. Pretty funny actually. I think his record is $80,000 of garbage recycled for free so far, including shipping costs.
Is it possible to have a post on /. anymore that does not contain pseudo-libertarian neo-con propaganda?
I mean for chrissakes, I used to read this site for techie issues, now it's all "GM seeds are patriotic" and "Al Gore broke your toilet" and "nuclear power makes you healthy" in every fscking post.
I keep looking in the browser title bar to see if I accidentally typed "Drudge Report" or something.
It’s not a matter of enforcing the contract; it’s a matter of benefiting from it. The courts don’t want people entering into illegal contracts, benefiting from them and then disclaiming their reasonability because it’s illegal. That encourages moral hazard.
I can’t pull up the cite right off the top of my head, but the case I am thinking about involved a husband who was in the middle of a divorce proceeding who won a substation lottery prize (100k I think). He did not want to split the prize with his ex-wife, so he “sold” the winning ticket to his mistress for a cut of the future prize money. The mistress then squelch on the deal and the husband sued.
The court ruled that the contract was illegal because the purpose was to defraud the husband’s wife. However, they still enforced the contract, so the mistress got her cut. They restored the wife’s 50% share. The husband, who instigated this fraud, got no benefit from this illegal contract.
I have heard of similar cases involving hourly McDonnalds workers who win big Monopoly prizes – and can’t claim them because they are employees – and the various tactics used to get around this.
No one's mentioned 419eater.com yet? Usually any popular site tangentially related to a story gets posted fairly quickly.
Personally I'd prefer to steal $33k from them, rather than make the pose naked with a stupid sign.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Izzat so? Well why don't you try doing business with Nigerians. Better yet, why don't take a nice vacation there...
I've always thought "bad Nigerians" until talking to a well traveled PhD of African descent who told me that very few of these scams originate in Nigeria. Most are actually posted by mostly white folks from internet cafes. He told me of watching and talking with one of them in a Scottish internet cafe!
George and the monies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=372Ah0Z_L1w
Oh, you should hear my rant against conservatives and libertarians--the fucking retards who think that the answer to the recent shitstorm financial crisis is LESS regulation for corporations and banks. It's like the parent of a spoiled brat of a son deciding that the answer to his kid's behavior problems is to give him even MORE freedom and LESS rules.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Nope, Common Law courts have ruled that you have to refund the money. If you conspire to kill and get cold feet you donâ(TM)t get to keep the money.
The purpose of enforcing illegal contracts is not âoemake people work together.â The purpose is to prevent people from benefiting from illegal activity. To take your case, we would be encouraging a lot of people to enter into âoecontract for killsâ so they could renege on them and keep the money. (Think of a business plan that you only kill 1 out of every 3. Kind of encourages people to sign up on the off chance that you would do it.)
You want to structure the law so there is no benefit to entering a illegal contract â" and sometime that means enforcing â"certain-- provisions.
There is little surprising about the story, just how messed up the summary is. The woman on trial was not scammed but part of the scam. She is a criminal who in exchange for a hefty percentage of real cash (and not promised cash as in the 911 scam) uses her own account to funnel money to her criminal employers.
For that matter, there doesn't even seem to be a 911 scam going on at all. There are many other types of scams after all. Presumably since it involves cars it involves car sales where the car is never delivered.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Most people who get stopped for a ticket don't try to bribe the officer, but in India, this is common.
Actually, in India, the officer stops you to solicit a bribe.
paintball
Violent criminals don't live in wealthy areas because violent crime isn't very profitable. The guy who embezzled a few hundred thousand from his company might be your neighbor though!
So while you're less likely to be mugged in a rich neighborhood, I wouldn't necessarily say you're less likely to get robbed.
You could, for example, live next to Barnie Madoff.
Put another way, like any other profession, only the really good criminals get to be rich.
paintball
I can solve the banking issues.
Kill FDIC. Take it away and shoot it. It is a horrible monster which has made the banks customers fools.
FDIC makes it so you do not have to think about what a bank is doing with your money. All you want to hear about is low costs and high interests.
Safety means nothing. "My money is federally insured. I want a toaster!"
Banks used to have to compete on the safety of your money as well as service and interest rates. What did you think would happen when it no longer made any business sense to compete on safety? I am not an anarchist. I believe that there are things that only a strong federal government can and should do.
Rest assured though that the government will do those things slowly, badly and expensively. But the truth here is that we have not seen an unregulated banking system.
What we have seen is a banking system with most of the federal rules torn out but with a big federal banner stating that no bank can ever again fairly compete on safety.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I work for a number of banks doing fraud protection, and I saw a scan of one of those forms spammed out that says the victim won millions of dollars and all they have to do is fill out the form. It was completely filled out, and the poor man had even included a photocopy of his passport as the scammer requested. He was in his 60s. It was sad and angering. I'd have no problem watching these jerks get lined up and shot one-by-one.
Access to the internet is not needed nor required.
I was getting this as early as 1991, right after I subscribed to the National Geographic and Scientific America, and was living in an oil rich country.
The scammers from Nigeria must have gotten the subscribers list and targeted likely countries.
What I got was plain letters by postal mail, very similar to the email scams today.
The internet just made it easier ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
yeah, like provide logistical support to the army! Oh wait, Halliburton did that BADLY and EXPENSIVELY to the tune of billions of dollars. Clearly the government would have done worse?
No, corporations that are given defacto monopolies will always be WORSE than the government. The times government ends up being bad is when they contract out to these thieves.
That is because it is the government doing the contracting.
Halliburton does a much better and cheaper job for private companies.
If they did not the private corps would use someone else.
So this is not a problem of Halliburton being worse than the government. It was the government. Just going through Halliburton.
Are you really incapable of seeing this?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
The purpose of enforcing illegal contracts ...
Courts will NOT enforce illegal contracts. That principle dates back to Roman Law and is enforced throughout common and civil law worlds. And yes, IAAAL.
BTW your scenario above about the lottery winning and divorce, doesn't disclose an illegal agreement at all. Assuming all the formalities were met to assign the lottery winnings on the condition that 50k (half) would come back you have a) a legal contract assigning the winnings and b) a decision by the court to divide the marital wealth 50/50, 50k from the lottery winnings being owed to the wife independent of the assignment. In the end the mistress would get to keep 50k, and the man would owe his wife 50k.
You want to structure the law so there is no benefit to entering a illegal contract ...
And you would have our courts in effect say "do the killing or we'll make you pay the money back." I don't think so. Certainly in Australia courts will not come to the aid of a criminal enterprise. The woman is guilty of fraud vis a vis the buyers, but the scammers have no legal recourse against her (on these facts).
That worked well for Van der Sloot, didn't it?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I Am Alcoholics Anonymous' Lawyer?
Literally, I am an Australian Lawyer, but yeah ... pretty much amounts to the same thing.
According to the article, it was the defrauded car buyers who went to the police. The scammers didn't complain that they didn't get their loot. This article implies that the woman cleverly reverse defrauded the scammers, when in fact she was complicit with them in stealing from the public and simply betrayed them. Honor among thieves, much?
it is about time those bouncing rubber lips got fleeced, oh and I have 50 trillion gold bars if /. can help me offload them :p