A Day in the Life of a Nigerian Scammer 196
prostoalex writes "The media made a Nigerian scammer's career look too easy. Get online, introduce yourself as a corrupt government official willing to take the money out of the country, and wait for the wire transfers from victims to start rolling in. So, the Associated Press takes us through a day in life of Nigerian scammer. It's a life that takes place in Internet cafes with aged screens and free Webmail accounts. However, by the end of the article the AP talks about some people who have made a good career out of it - three cars, two houses. That is, until the next crackdown comes along."
Blog of a scammer (Score:5, Interesting)
[yes I'm kidding]
Capitalism... (Score:3, Interesting)
Scammers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Revenge on a scammer (priceless) (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the story of a man who is targeted by Nigerian scammers but gets revenge on them and actually screws them out of some money. The whole thing takes place over several months and includes pictures, audio recordings of phone conversations, email correspondence and other stuff.
It's quite long, but worth a read if you have the time.
Re:Nigerian Internet Relay scam calls (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's their 419 site [secretservice.gov] and a list of crimes they cover [secretservice.gov]
Re:Nigerian Internet Relay scam calls (Score:2, Interesting)
Back in college, a good friend of mine abused these lines quite a bit.
Sadly, he was deaf.
I'd get a call in the middle of the night and there was a single line message stating this was a speech to text call from XYZ and that was the only thing the operator could say outside of what the friend said.
He'd start off asking if the operator was a man or a woman and then start telling us what he'd do to this operator. And then get the operator to say quite a bit of sexually explicit talk to make it sound as though it was the operator saying this. I'd apologize to the operator and tell them that my friend is an idiot, and most of the time they would not say ANYTHING, they'd just pass on the message. The few times they'd say anything, they'd tell me they are obligated to say exactly what the deaf user was saying and they cannot deviate from this. And when I'd apologize, he'd start getting abusive to the operator.
Who says the handicapped can't be just as much an asshole as anyone else...probably why the guy hung out with me and my crew (as we were pretty much known to be jerks back then...some would say still to this day).
So even though it wasn't you, I apologize for taking part in anything that abuses folks like you that have to undertake this very serious activity so that others can communicate like everyone else (though these days, I skip the phone when I need to get ahold of Deafie and send him an email...for some reason, he is still more happy with phone calls than this medium though...and I hate the phone...hmmm).
Anonymous because my current work situation is far to politically correct to talk about this type of activity.
Re:Nigerian Internet Relay scam calls (Score:1, Interesting)
Last week, a bunch of teenagers fed a homosexual child porn story to an operator who had to read it in it's entirety. It was about 50 pages long and he had to read it aloud for about 20 minutes until he had to go for his lunch break. I took over the call and heard the called party talking about how funny it was to do these prank calls before I turned off mute. Sadly, since my supervisor was in his office, I accidentaly started reading an article in newsweek about the history of netscape instead of the porn story. For some unknown reason, the called party called me an idiot, and both caller and called party hung up. (how did the caller who typed that story know that I was'nt reading the right text? hrmmmmm)
Naturaly, officialy, the above never happened.
But yes, technicaly, we have to process calls that are obscene, derogatory, insulting, and have threatening language. And I do process a lot of legitimate obscene, derogatory, insulting, and threatening calls. Deaf people can be crude just like hearing people.
It's just that the ones trying to defraud the system are more memorable. Sides, it's not like we relay operators can't tell the prank/nigerian/prison callers from "REAL" deaf people, it's just that we can't do anything about it.
Re:419 eaters (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems to me the top section is reports done by the website owner as opposed to the bottom section of letters "submissions from fellow scambaiters"
I thought it was pretty interesting that this guy actually scams the scammers, according to notations in big red bold letters he's taken people who wrote to him for over $1200 and I'm sure he's hoping that number climbs as he eagerly awaits more email of marks to flood into him. I assume (since he runs an "anti-scam" website that he's never himself been scammed out of money.
That's really cool. I'm hoping maybe this guy can expand his business, maybe going out on the streets at night and robbing people at gunpoint who approach him that he might think are suspicious
I've seen this done in Nigeria (Score:2, Interesting)
Posted throughout the room were printed notices warning the patrons that these types of scams were illegal and not tolerated. People are quite aware of this problem, and for the most part frown upon it severely.
After I took my seat at a PC, as I went about my business, I couldn't help but notice that the person sitting next to me was composing a 419 scam email. (He was using Yahoo mail.) Sure enough, he was typing in the same stereotypical message you've seen numerous times. After he clicked the "Send" button, he immediately began composing a similar message to someone else in his mailing list.
I couldn't help but steal a glance at the list of messages in his inbox; many of the incoming messages were bounces, as you can imagine, from incorrect addresses.
After I was finished, I discretely reported his behavior to the manager of the Internet cafe. The manager was young, and thanked me for the tip, but didn't confront the scammer, who was older, larger, and clearly wealthier. And the scamming continued...
Re:Capitalism... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong on both counts.
1: The American Dream is to achieve sufficient success to provide, on your own and being beholden to none, for the whole of your nuclear family until your children are all grown.
Most of those characterised as "living the American Dream" are not, in literal fact, workers. They are businessmen, investors, and executives--who, while they doubtless provide a significant benefit to society, are arguably "parasites" from a strictly "work" point of view. (as in, their contribution to society depends on the physical or mental efforts of others.)
2: Capitalism sure as hell encourages fraud and theft. There IS no "capitalist ethos." There is, instead, a clear recognition by capitalist countries that people are greedy and will act however gets them the most profit.
Capitalism is not a system free of graft, fraud, and theft. Rather, it is a system that aligns the most selfish desires of society with the needs of society as a whole, by way of making investments liquid and fraud prohibitvely expensive.
Stupid Greedy People, mostly.... (Score:4, Interesting)
The newer ones are too tame - the fake lotto scams exploit stupid greedy people (but so do the government-run lotteries they're usually pretending to compete with), and the "dying cancer patient wants to do something good with the rest of her life" tearjerkers are really only exploiting the gullible, who don't deserve to be abused the way the classic 419 victims do.
Re:Slashdot frontpaged a scam site!! (Score:1, Interesting)
a little chat (Score:2, Interesting)