September 12, 2006 – Nigerian 419 Scams
Sad news everyone. I just read some news about one of the major ring leaders of a 419 Scam was arrested. So say good bye to a lot of those great classic emails promising to make you rich.
For those of you who are unaware of 419 scams they are those emails you get offering you too good to be true deals over the internet in order to trick you into sending them money. They are called 419 scams because most of them originate out of
Code 419: Don’t rip morons off over the internet.
The scams are usually pretty easy to spot. My favorite goes a something like this.
Dear Sucker,
I am a high ranking official with the banking ministry of some country you have never heard of and am loyal to the recently overthrown Prince Nameyoucannotpronounce. Since Prince Nameyoucannotpronounce was exiled and his banking accepts frozen he is unable to start an army that will help him regain his thrown so that he can promote peace threw out the world for a million billion years. If you send me $10,000 I can bribe some officials and get Prince Nameyoucannotpronounce fortune of elventy billion dollars released which we would be more then happy to share with you for your stupidity. Oh wait I meant generosity. All you have to do is send a cashers check for $10,000 along with your name, address, telephone number, SSN, mothers madden name, bank account numbers, and any other information we may need to withdraw all your life savings.
Come on how could you not help. The Prince gets his thrown back, there is the whole world peace thing, and even though you did not do it for the money but rather the good feeling you get for helping an ousted prince half of eleventy billion dollars will be a nice perk.
I read one story about a guy in the
An old coworker of mine thought he was getting a motorcycle worth about $7,000 for $500. Net gain for him -$500 and a ton of dumb ass jokes from me.
Another old coworker of mine actually played with the scam for a while to find out how exactly it worked. He was trying to sell a car at the time and got an email saying this guy wanted to buy it, but he only had a cashers check for $5,000 over what my friend wanted. Of course my buddy realized it was a scam from the second he saw it, but wanted to see how far he could take it. So he agreed. A couple of days latter he got a Bank of America cashers cheek for $5,000 over his asking price. He knew it was a fake so he took it to a Bank of America branch and asked if they could verify it. They ran it under there fluorescent light and checked the check number and told him it was a real check. So he went to his bank and had them check it. They told him it was a real check, but suggested he wait a couple of days after depositing it so that it could be processed and verified. So he went a head and deposited the check and sure enough he had several thousand dollars sitting in his account for a couple of days. The following week was classic. He got countless emails with very bad grammar asking him to hurry and transfer the $5,000. He even has voice mail from some guy asking for the money. Of course after a couple of days the bank realized the check was a fraud and withdrew the money from his account and coincidently about the same time all the voice mails and emails stopped.
What I like most about these scams is that the scammers get involved. It is not just send your money here and never hear from them again. No they take a personal interest. You really get what you pay for. The guy that fell for the Prince scam and lost $500,000, that was not one check. It started off small like $5,000. Then they ran into some problems and needed an extra $20,000 and so on and so on. And when he ran out of money they asked if he would help them with another sucker they found. My friend that lost the $500 on the motorcycle got an email saying there was some unforeseen processing fee and they needed another $200. It was not until he refused to pay that and demanded his money back that they stopped talking to him. And the buddy that was selling the car has all sorts of correspondence from them. It really is a customer service industry.
I am just up set that taking money from stupid people is illegal. I don’t think the scammers should be punished for having tricked people out of there money. If they are stupid enough to fall for it they don’t deserve the money in the first place. Look if you want to get rid of these scams it is pretty easy. All you have to do is make a law that says if you fall for a scam you have to pay your scammer twice as much as he tricked you out of and exchange nationality with him. The way I figure it we will get a huge influx of smart people and get rid of all our morons.
Ok one more topic since it is so close to 9-11. I watched the tail end of the ABC 911 special, and have read a lot of stuff on message boards claiming it was bias and made this person or that person look responsible. People tend to look back on history and apply a modern day prospective on it. I tried explaining this to one of my boss’s, and his response was, “No what is wrong is that we have became too reliant on technology for surveillance and spying rather then using human intel.” So seeing as how my statement was on the validity of accessing blame rather than operational setbacks I quickly dropped the subject and now try and not discuss politics with my boss any more.
Anyway back to my point, one thing people love to point out is that the CIA had OBL tracked to some tent and could have taken him out if some politician had only given them permission. Five years ago having the CIA assassinate someone was easier said then done; the CIA’s track record on it has not been a good one. (I.e. Bay of Pigs.) Even if we had succeeded, we would have looked more like an imperialistic nation then we do now. And there is no way
Well I hope this has given you something to think about and good luck with those 419s.
