Girls Catfish ISIS On Social Media For Travel Money

MarkWhittington writes: Yahoo Travel reported that three women in Chechnya took ISIS for $3,300 before getting caught. They are now under investigation for Internet fraud, which seems to be illegal even when committed against the most fearsome terrorist army in modern times. The scam seems to be a combination of the Nigerian Prince con, in which a mark is fooled into giving the con artist large sums of money and catfishing, in which the mark strikes up an online romance with someone he thinks is an attractive woman (or man depending on the gender and preference of the mark.)

Comments

Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is hilarious. I wonder why more people haven't tried it.

Re: Nice.

[Adriax]

The target does not change the legalities of the action. The state is compelled to investigate and rule.
But the punishment is up to their discretion (barring horrid minimum sentencing laws like some jail obsessed countries have). So while they likely will be found guilty, a smart judge will punish them with a pinkie promise not to do it again.

Re:Nice.

[bloodhawk]

So you think somehow the gangs of LA are going to magically protect you from someone driving a garbage truck full of explosives into your neighbourhood or from a stranger walking up to you hacking at your head with a machete? man you must walk around with a 1 kilometer perimeter where the only people you ever see are LA Gang members.

If someone wants to kill you bad enough then they CAN, embarrassing organisations like ISIS is a good way to not only get yourself killed but others around you. ISIS are a bunch of sadistic pricks with seriously warped moral compasses and they have a bunch of blind followers who will happily sacrifice their lives just to make a point that you can't fuck with them should they choose to do so, or are you really so niave that you think ISIS members don't exist in just about every country of the world?

Catfish

[ArchieBunker]

Can we stop using catfish as a verb? Its fucking dumb.

Re:Catfish

[thegarbz]

Too late. It's in the Oxford dictionary now and part of the correct use of the English language. It's actually not the only definition of catfish in verb form.

Re:Catfish

[Mashiki]

I thought that was called noodling? That's what it's called here in Canada(Ontario specifically) and in the southern US.

Re:Catfish

[Sqr(twg)]

Yes, verbing wierds language, as Watterson wrote, but on the other hand; What word do you propose we use to mean "to swindle by assuming a false identity online"?

Language evolves as new words are needed, and just because a word is already a noun, there's no rule saying it can't become a verb. (To "fish" is a verb.)

Why is that illegal?

[SuperKendall]

If the intelligence agencies were smart, they would offer to match anything you were able to con out of known terrorist groups. The scam artists of the world would de-fund ISIS in about a year, all without firing a shot.

Re:Why is that illegal?

[zedaroca]

The scam artists of the world would de-fund ISIS in about a year

You forgot who is financing ISIS.
According to the vice-president (and a lot of other more credible places), it's the US allies, that their funds from the US.
The clip with Joe Biden
News about him apologizing for telling them out
Old Wikileaks leak about them financing anyone available to fight against Assad, and being interested in a big humanitarian disaster. Quotes from the e-mail:

One Air Force intel guy (US) said very carefully that there isn't much of a Free Syrian Army to train right now anyway

the idea 'hypothetically' is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within

They dont believe air intervention would happen unless there was enough media attention on a massacre, like the Ghadafi move against Benghazi. They think the US would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn't reach that very public stage.

Re:Why is that illegal?

[SuperKendall]

You severely under-estimate the combined ability of the worlds scammers targeting a specific group... especially so with a group who have already shown they are prone to being manipulated.

No amount of stolen museum works or oil wells or side income from slave brothels/human trafficking would save them from total plunder.

Big pockets are all the better as lure the lure for more attacks.

Re:Why is that illegal?

[radarskiy]

"If the intelligence agencies were smart"

Your suggestion would be smart only to someone actually incentivized to end ISIS.

If ISIS went out of business, intelligence agencies would no longer be able to justify their expenditures in combating ISIS and would have to put in some actual work to find a replacement target.

Re:Why is that illegal?

[goodmanj]

... Okay, so I get a friend in Saudi Arabia to send me a money order, marked: "for travel to the Islamic State, Allahu akbar". I show it to the US government, they pay me a reward, I split it with my friend.

That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure a real con artist could do better. The problem with doing business with con artists is that they're con artists.

Re:Why is that illegal?

[Xest]

Yeah if Turkey's latest actions where it's killed 260 kurds are anything to go by it's pretty obvious which side Turkey is on.

Turkey is the new Pakistan, pretending to be pro-West on one hand to get nice military funding, whilst supporting the likes of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS on the other.

All thanks to Erdogan.

Re:Why is that illegal?

[gmack]

The reality is much more complicated than that. The funds they used weren't American and the US pretty much asked them not to go off fund and and arm Jihadist groups but they went ahead and did it anyways because they wanted to hurt Iran's allies. (The current Iraqi government and Syria). The result was predictable: ISIS turned on their former benefactors now that they are self financing using local tax revenue and captured oil wells.

Re:Why is that illegal?

[Xest]

Erdogan has turned a blind eye to ISIS fighters and weapons using his country as a transit point into Syria whilst blocking Kurdish fighters from doing the same and has put far more effort into bombing Kurds.

It's got nothing to do with skin colour or religion, Turkey and the Kurds are both secular, ISIS is an Islamist group, and Erdogan is an Islamist leader, that's about it. Calling out a bad leader for doing more to oppress a group that has been in peace talks for 2 years and has been attacked by Erdogan's troops more than they've attacked Erdogans troops doesn't make me an Islamaphobe by any measure, particularly as there are more than enough muslim Kurds. Stop being so ignorant.

Your post really couldn't be more useless, "it's a nationalism issue", what's a nationalism issue exactly? bombing the Kurds? great, but how does that justify implicitly supporting ISIS by letting them transit fighters and weapons through Turkey? how does that make it okay to attack the Kurds more so than ISIS? It doesn't matter what the motivation issue is, it's wrong all the same. Erdogan has long held the belief that ISIS are more of a benefit than a problem, and that's really not good for the West. Only now that they've attacked Turkey proper in a slightly more brutal way has his calculus changed somewhat and even then his instinct is not to obliterate ISIS, but instead to use it as an excuse to hammer the shit out of the PKK, and hit the YPG too.

It's kind of sad how you had to see the problem as an issue of race and religion, I'm astounded that you'd then cry bigot - you obviously are wrestling with your own inability to keep religion and race out of a discussion it's wholly irrelevant to. Crying "Islamaphobe", talking about skin colour and shouting bigot wont detract from your own apparent bigotry where you jump to conclusions that bear no relevance to anything that was said.

It ought to be legal to scam ISIS

[rahvin112]

If it was legal to scam them they would be flooded with offers from so many girls it would either bankrupt them or they would stop recruiting because of all the scams. It would seriously disrupt their recruiting.

It's just like banning people from joining them. We should be lining those people up and flying them over there right after they sign papers saying they aren't citizens anymore. Let them go, fight and die as long as they never return. They won't be in our country anymore. And on the flip side it should be perfectly legal to scam them. They are a criminal organization and I personally like the old world idea that someone that's breaking the law and fighting prosecution is then outside the law including it's protections. There aren't innocents in groups like ISIS, everyone should be free to target them with any action that would normally be deemed criminal.

Re:It ought to be legal to scam ISIS

[mysidia]

If it was legal to scam them they would be flooded with offers from so many girls it would either bankrupt them or they would stop recruiting because of all the scams.

I would suggest the prosecutors exercise their prosecutorial discretion to not prosecute against people for non-violent crimes committed against overseas violent enemies/lawless violent groups.

At some point the noise of all the scammers/fakers could drown out those whom terrorist orgs could "legitimately" recruit, therefore interfering with those groups' ability to recruit.

Re:It ought to be legal to scam ISIS

[houghi]

Stealing is illegal. Simple as that. I think it is GOOD that it is illegal. That way there is no line that you can cross.

What you are promoting is that people take justice into their own hands. That will end badly.

And placing people outside the lwa and their protection is a good idea for you? To me that means you are no better than those who you are trying to fight.

If you want them ded so badly, join the people who fight them. Does not even have to be the US Army.

Re:This is a crap propaganda post

[Culture20]

This is a crap propaganda post. How much the state department is paying you?

*ahem* the politically correct word is poop. Please, think of the children!

Okay,
This is a crap propaganda post. How much the poop is paying you?
Better?

The realistic problem here is one of security

[Shadow of Eternity]

People pissing off ISIL/ISIS or interfering with non-public operations are a problem for states that are doing their own things officially. When you've got private citizens scamming them like this you wind up with lots of little bullseyes antagonizing ISIL which might provoke a reprisal of some kind.

What we really need to do with all these non-state and semi-state actors like ISIL and Al Qaeda is start issuing letters of marque again. "You want to pick a fight with these guys? Go have it at. Follow these rules and understand you're on your own or we'll come after you ourselves."

Re:"...most fearsome terrorist army in modern time

[Dutch Gun]

No one said US (or Russian, for that matter, where these women were from) citizens were afraid of ISIS. We have a few advantages, namely:

a) We're protected by a powerful military that would stomp ISIS in a head-to-head engagement, and
b) we are physical separated from them by vast distances.

No, I think "repulsed" is probably more accurate. Those in the direct line of fire probably feel a bit differently.

Collateral Damage.

[westlake]

This looks like it is all in fun.

Until ISIS decides to set off a truck bomb on the street where these women live.

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. The Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people.

What ISIS Really Wants

Re:They should legalize fraud against terrorists

[ThatAblaze]

Man, I want to live in your world! Imagine if everyone legalized anything that was hilarious. I'd go around planting drugs on the police, and if I got caught my defense would be "sorry judge, it was just too hilarious to stop!"

Re:This is a crap propaganda post

[circletimessquare]

prove it

the link goes to yahoo.com

which links to a story by RT.com, aka Russia Today

so...

yeah, pretty much, it's propaganda, you're right

How much the state department is paying you?

uh... you mean the Kremlin

although, the idea that Russia Today is actually run by the US State Dept is exactly the sort of low iq paranoid schizophrenic fantasy you sort of crackpots believe, so... carry on my wayward son

Re: This is a crap propaganda post

[LaurenCates]

Social engineering is strongly related to computer hacking?