Nice Try, Nigeria

[catcul]

I recently received an email that claimed that I had a warrant for my arrest from the FBI. I immediately knew that it was fake.

• It had no email address in the "To:" field.

• It didn't have my name on it anywhere.

• It wanted me to send US$98 to an address in Lagos, Nigeria.

If you're wondering, I reported it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. I seriously doubt they can do anything about it other than issue a warning.

I posted that on Customer Suck, but I think it's appropriate here, too. If anyone has an idea on shutting these scams down, don't keep it to yourself.

[Pixilated]

I find them entertaining, but that's because I've luckily never actually been caught by one (came close to it at one point, though, but that's another story).

It's hard enough to catch these people when you've got agreements between countries to cooperate in such investigations. In a country where the police are erratic/poorly trained/easily bribed (or pretty much nonexistent), it's virtually impossible. I'm not sure what Nigeria's police are like; I think they are trying to deal with scammers, but it's really hard to track them down.

[ben_who]

This scam might be slowly becoming a victim of its own success; the whole advance fee fraud thing has practically entered popular culture at this point, and the letters are starting to look like a quaint anachronism.

Of course, there are always those who live in a box...

I'm a sucker for 419eater.com because it shocks me how many fraudsters fail to recognize the EXACT SAME FRAUD when it's handed back to them. "I'll give you free money if you send me some cash" turns into "I'll give you free money if you perform a task for me," and they seem to fall for it at a rate at least as frequently as those who get scammed. And in the same way - performing progressively complex tasks in an increasingly hostile atmosphere, sometimes for years, in the hopes that this time, the floodgates will open and the money will start coming in. And they do the same stuff, too; putting themselves in debt, bringing in other people to help, sometimes even engaging in criminal activity to keep things up. It's extraordinary.

Anywho, I have a distinct impression that the money supply from this scam is starting to dry up. I wonder what'll happen when they're forced to try something else.

[Skunkle]

Nonetheless, these (usually, but not always as evidenced here, of the advance-fee fraud variety) are known as 419 scams because 419 is the Nigerian police code for them. They're so common that there's a police code. They come from other places in South Africa, as well as the Ukraine as well. This is the first I've heard of the FBI version, but the others range from the common (helping a dying person perform charity, aiding someone in smuggling his deceased relative's fortune out of the country, helping a church get started, winning a lottery) to the uncommon (I got one with a guy posing as a lawyer and reverend [doubly trustworthy!] who had caught a crime syndicate and I was on the list of people it had swindled out of money - basically the same as enticing random people to join a class-action lawsuit and get money to which they're not entitled.) I've also gotten several in which it's made to appear as though a business transaction is nearly complete and, just before one party is about to be sent a shocking amount of money, the email asking where to send it comes to me instead of its intended recipient-- the hope is that you'll think you can play along and get sent the cash!

If one wants some entertainment, a site called 419Eater is run by people who scam 419 scammers in return, stringing them along for weeks or even months. Some of them have gotten photos (both fake and possibly real) of scammers, tricked them into sending money or artwork** in hopes of getting paid, talked them into taking photos of themselves holding signs with embarrassing messages or doing elaborate tricks, and even gotten them to book airline tickets or record films (in one case, one person got a scammer to film two men in an African shop bumbling their way through a recreation of the "dead Parrot" skit; in another, one got a scammer to copy by hand the entirety of a Harry Potter novel.) It's worth reading.

**Please, please read and heed their warnings. In 99% of cases, a pissed-off scammer won't come hunting for you. They run hundreds of these scams concurrently. They have neither the time nor the drive to chase somebody down. But there are nonetheless reasons why one who wants to do reverse-scams should take careful precautions before doing so.

Edit: While typing, somebody else also plugged 419Eater. It's worth a read. It's amusing the way a scammer who poses as a dying cancer patient named Richard will, when called Robert by the person he contacted, who pays vast amounts for art, suddenly become an aspiring artist named Robert.

[Andara Bledin]

They come from Asia and western Europe, as well. I've gotten quite a few from the UK.

Well, my old boss got them. He liked to have them printed out because he collected them. He had one from the '60s, which is when our company started, and they were still mailing them.

Actually, got one in the mail last month. Kept it because it was just too amusing and quaint.

[crashhelmet]

419eater.com does a pretty good job of fighting back at them.

I've had my fair share of emails come in from these scammers. I've even had them try and contact me through various social networking sites over the years.

[Skunkle]

I just got a great one.

Title of email, exactly as it appeared: ***SPAM*** GET BACK TO US

Body of email: READ ATTACHMENT AND GET BACK TO US

Attachment: YOURPAYMENTOF27.000.000THROUGHATMCARD.doc

Yup, seems legit! (For those who don't know, in most European countries - and Africa - when listing numbers, the symbols are reversed, commas and periods. Meaning, when listing a price in dollars and cents or whatever is the local currency, it's written as, say, 4,99. Divisions in large numbers are the opposite, so we'd write a thousand as 1,000, they'd use 1.000. There are lots of small 'tells' in even the best scam emails which show the writers are more acquainted with European/British English and style.)

[Gravekeeper]

I got a court date notice from the Missouri Court of Appeals.

From Poland.

[Ginger Tea]

(For those who don't know, in most European countries - and Africa - when listing numbers, the symbols are reversed, commas and periods. Meaning, when listing a price in dollars and cents or whatever is the local currency, it's written as, say, 4,99. Divisions in large numbers are the opposite, so we'd write a thousand as 1,000, they'd use 1.000. There are lots of small 'tells' in even the best scam emails which show the writers are more acquainted with European/British English and style.)

I can not say I have ever encountered pricing in the UK as 4,99 or 1.000, I am not well versed in European styles bar the alternate way of writing 7, which I sometimes adopt as my capital T slants (and my H's look like Cyrillic backward N's), maybe else where in Europe they do, but not the UK.

[Rageaholic]

I remember reading about some scam in Indiana where the scammer sends a letter claiming to be from the courts telling them they missed Jury Duty and are facing arrest unless they pay X amount of money. Of course, as with all scams, they demand the marks bank info so that should be a big tip off.

[Greenday]

I got a scam email the other day. Sender had the name "Yahoo! Mail Team". Claimed my account was going to be shut down and they required a bunch of personal information. Hovered my mouse over the sender name and it gave me a University of Louisiana at Lafayette email address. Sent an email to the school letting them know someone was inappropriately using their email servers.

[Sarah Valentine]

I'm willing to bet anything that later on that day somebody got kicked out of school.

[Greenday]

I'm willing to bet anything that later on that day somebody got kicked out of school.

God I hope so.

[TheHuckster]

I'm willing to bet anything that later on that day somebody got kicked out of school.

Sometimes it's not the students' doing, though. As someone who spent some time in university IT departments, many accounts are compromised during a semester due to keylogging viruses, dictionary attacks using common passwords (you wouldn't believe the amount of students that just use 'password' as their email password), or simply by being stupid enough to allow their roommate or someone else access to their email account.

I've gotten quite a few emails from my university's schoolmates addresses with similar phishing attacks. They didn't know anything about it until they realized their email account was hacked.

[Ginger Tea]

I received an email plea from someone I went to an evening class with 5 or more years ago, we all had emails due to being on the teachers mailing list and I never cleared my address book up.

Message was basically they were abroad and had their passport money and ticket stolen and enter sob story here, well I barely knew the person and as facebook was allowed to brows my address book for friends I did have her in people you may know and shot her a FB message saying I got what looked like a scam mail from her.