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Louisana Police Bust an Infamous Nigerian Email Spam Scammer (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: You have probably at some point been contacted via email spam by someone claiming you are the beneficiary in a will of a Nigerian prince. As the scam goes, all you have to do is submit your personal information and Western Union some funds to process the necessary paperwork, and in return you will receive millions of dollars. One of the people behind the popular scam, Michael Neu, has been arrested by police in Slidell, Louisiana.
This may come as a shocker, but Neu is not a prince, nor is he Nigerian. He is a 67-year-old male possibly of German descent (based on his last name) who is facing 269 counts of wire fraud and money laundering for his alleged role as a middle man in the scheme. According to Slidell police, some of the money obtained by Neu was wired to co-conspirators who do actually live in Nigera.
This may come as a shocker, but Neu is not a prince, nor is he Nigerian. He is a 67-year-old male possibly of German descent (based on his last name) who is facing 269 counts of wire fraud and money laundering for his alleged role as a middle man in the scheme. According to Slidell police, some of the money obtained by Neu was wired to co-conspirators who do actually live in Nigera.
They should give him the old southern welcome for snake oil salesmen - hang him from a tree outside of town.
...that the fella looks like he actually does? I would never have thought so myself. I must admit that my mind was overtaken by stereotypes.
That is: The Nigerian Scammer must look like a [typical] Nigerian!
The Nigerian folk must be bemused! They will closely be watching the news. For once, we can look and examine ourselves when it comes to the implicit biases we have among our fellow brethren.
As someone else pointed out in an earlier story, Slashdot shouldn't be propagating click bait headlines.
What? You don't have white guys of german descendant in Nigeria? He must be a nigerian prince, if its on the internet, it must be true.
Fight Spammers!
...I am writing to tell you about a dear friend who is trapped in a country by horrible forces in the States of Louisiana. He was to handle a large transfer of funds. But now we must have the money transferred and some for use in his legal issues. He gave us your most worthy name as a trusted dear friend who could assist and you can keep some of the money.
YOu mean the accused Michael Neu?
See, Michael Neu has been mentioned on the media and all over the World on the web. He's been punished already.
Regardless if Michael Neu is not guilty of the charges, he is screwed for as long as he lives - and as long as folks look up their friends and acquaintances on the internet and as long as companies like facebook use their systems to find people - think about it.
Fortunately for him, all he's accused of is a Nigerian scam that got gullible people and there is no sympathy in this country for gullible people (unless they're religious - virgin birth ...rising from the dead *snicker*) so therefore, he'll be just kind of laughed at and considered a bad boy who got caught. No harm done. It's not like he's Bernie Madoff or a Goldman Sachs banker.
Regrettably, flogging him to death is not likely to be among the sentencing options in the jurisdiction where he'll be charged.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I know some one at Western Union that runs the local Horse race lines. I just need the funds to setup a fake offtrack betting house.
Neu! made some very great krautrock albums back in the 70s. It's still some of the best driving music ever. I like to put this album on when I'm driving down Hwy 101 along the ocean, like I was earlier this morning.
https://youtu.be/ubdHYhnersU
It was 78 degrees here today and people were surfing, which proves that global warming exists.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The scammers are always looking for more money mules, because the mules are the vulnerable front for the remote heads of the operation. If you see an ad for light office work from home with too good to be true pay, this is what they want you for.
>there is no sympathy in this country for gullible people (unless they're religious - virgin birth ...rising from the dead *snicker*)
Wow, careful you don't cut yourself on that edge.
More importantly, good old Michael Neu probably answered an ad for too good to be true pay for light office work. These guys are called arrows, who receive and fire the money through a series of other persons.
Ladies and gentlemen, if the pay's too good and the work's too easy, no catch, it probably means you're involved in a scam.
Every poker table has a sucker. Look around the table. If you can't find him, congratulations, it's you.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Wrong, sometimes every person at the table is a shark.
... Navy.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
My favorites were actually the ones which purported to be from the widow of either a banker or a military officer. Invariably they would initially talk about being a dear Christian woman, then invariably progress to asking for help with some illegal transaction - tax fraud, theft from the estate of a dead person, etc.
I thought most of these 419 scammers had faded away... but apparently not.
#DeleteChrome
I was getting these scam messages back in the '90s... Has anyone actually fallen for this clearly bogus garbage?
OK. Please meet me at the track. Bring rope. I'll supply two horses.
Gullible people were NOT his only victims. What about everybody who does not want to receive unsolicited shit mails in their inbox all the time? This crap keeps getting through all the SPAM filters and makes email a useless joke. Anybody participating in the misuse and abuse of the email system should be punished heavily, they are beyond redemption.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a Sherriff in Louisiana. My department has recently impounded a large amount of stolen money ($153,210,093.12, to be exact) from a highly illegal internet swindling operation. Following the trial and conviction of the brigands, and after a dutiful records search it, appears that some of these funds were from a relative of yours. Unfortunately that relative is now deceased, and we believe you have legal title to approximately one third of the money once you establish your bona fides Please forward us your details and a $925 fee for the services of a court appointed trustee from the law firm of Dewy, Cheetam, and Howe, to process your claim and send you a check. If your include your bank account details we can wire the money to your account directly and can refund you half of the processing fee. Please do not delay as tax law changes under discussion may result in a loss of up to 30% of the money due you.
Respectfully
Larson E. Maggot
Sherriff, Louisiana
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
They always leave a reply to address, itherwise their scam wouldn't work.
I sign these fuckers up to all of the Christian newsletters at christianity.com (Newsletters... more...)
Christianity.com now have a captcha thanks to me (I think)
This crap keeps getting through all the SPAM filters and makes email a useless joke.
Nonsense. These "Nigerian" scams are the easiest things in the world to filter out. The are actually specifically designed to look like obvious scams, and the misspellings and even the claim to be Nigerian are intentional fabrications.
You see, for these scammers, the worst thing in the world is to waste time on semi-intelligent people who may fall for the initial hook, but then turn skeptical when asked to front money. So they only want to deal with the stupidest of the stupid. So they design a scam that only a total idiot would fall for, in order to separate the idiots from the herd.
If your filter isn't triggered by "Nigerian prince", then you deserve to be spammed.
It's called the "Motorik beat" and Alien Sex Fiend totally copped this for "Now I'm Feeling Zombified," if anyone was wondering.
Craig Grant is a BitConnect hyper, and has been involved in Nigerian scams as well, as a middle-man -- he bragged about getting 10% of the money that was sent to Africa. Has a big following on Steemit.
While you guys are busting your butts in the office and coming up with ridiculous Scrum "stories" to satisfy your PHBs, I'll be retired on a tropical island thanks to the tens of millions USD I'm going to get thanks to my partnership with a former top official of the Nigerian regime. Which required timely action and a very modest investment on my part.
And Donald Trump is going to Make America Great Again!!!
Is this the same MO as Bruce Bond, the former radio DJ who got busted for being a middle-man in some advance fee fraud scam?
That's great
Kinda true, though.
I certainly don't care what stupid superstitious first century desert redneck beliefs people want to keep in the comfort of their homes or churches.
It's when they use said stupid superstitions to inform public policy decisions that I get fucky.
We have bto give this beautiful mind a medal.....for showing stupid s around the world that there's always a way
However it would seem that I'm the only person to feel that way so far. I also searched for happy and some related terms. Maybe I should have tried schadenfreude?
Anyway, I'm always delighted to hear about anything that reduces the spam. At the same time, it makes me sad that the email spam problem persists after all these years. I think that's almost entirely due to the "Live and let spam" practices of the major email providers.
If you've been paying attention, then you've noticed that certain categories of spam have been cured. For example, you almost never see pump-and-dump stock scam spam these days. The authorities were able to solve that problem by attacking the scammers business models, and the problem went away.
If you haven't been paying attention, then you haven't noticed how many false positives you've lost over the years. You've still been forced to pay attention to the false negatives, but the main thing about filtering is that the spammers don't mind.
Oh well. I'd be glad to help solve the problem, but my capabilities are too limited in isolation. Feel free to politely ask for more detailed suggestions. Maybe I'll even notice and answer.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
"...He is a 67-year-old male possibly of German descent..."
Come on, spit it out: be honest. "German descent" my backside.
He's AMERICAN. He's a Yank. A US citizen.
Like very many - quite likely most - of the criminals, terrorists and other nefarious individuals abusing the Internet.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
It is immoral to leave money in the hands of a sucker.
Now, stealing from respectable people as Madoff did that is crime! ... that would be shrewd businessman ...
If he would restrict his operations only to goim
Wait, that is my Jewish bias speaking
He wired money to his co-conspirators? He didn't even use bitcoin?
How stupid can you be...
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
> Louisana Police
That had to have been very... very low hanging fruit
It's a weird American tradition to mention the full name of suspects. In most countries, he would be referred to as 'Michael N.', in order to protect him and his family if he turns out to be innocent.
I wonder if anyone has turned down a multi million inheritance thinking it was a scam? Quite a few years ago a descendent of one of my grandfather's cousins died. He had never married, had no siblings and his parents had passed away before him. So my grandfather's decedents ended up inheriting his estate. That turned out to be a fair few people to divide it between and he was by no means rich but we all got something. Sadly I never knew that he existed until a letter came in the mail. If it had come via email either the spam filter would have got it or I would have deleted it as a scam. Thinking about it I suppose that the non-scam inheritances always come in the mail from a law firm that you can check for legitimacy and, I would hope, contain some information that a scammer shouldn't know.
Hmmm... 101 along the ocean? So, South of Santa Barbara, Humboldt/Del Norte, Western Oregon or Northwestern Washington?
Probably caught in the "grand scheme" of things
It was an 18 month investigation, the guy is guilty.
I make $15,687.48 each back week some times more Making America Great Again (MAGA!) working at home online 3 hours day. Just by answering few simple questions online about President Trumps' tax reduction make money and help people sign up for Government Assistance of up to $5324.07 a month. This is not Entitlements, this is the actual money that the U.S.A. Government owes true citizens but has not been paid for over 8 years during the corrupt Clinton and Obama administration. President Donald J. Trump is resisting the current Hillary Crooked Clinton administration and empowering us to let true Americans receive the money that is owed to them by the Federal Government.
I could be so evil if I wanted to be.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
You're creepy ugh