Scamming the Nigerian scammers...Idiots weigh in on Columbia...
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Tuesday, February 04, 2003 at 03:49 PM [GMT-6]

I've recently gotten a slew of those email scams from the good folk in Nigeria; I figure they must have heard that I'm now in the website design business and therefore in desperate need of cash. Anyway, today I received a variation on the scam via an email with the provocative subject of "Donation for the Lord." If you care to read it, I've uploaded it in all its pious and humble glory here.

I had not seen this particular version before, so I went to a few of the usual debunking sites to check it out, including Urban Legends and Folklore (about.com), Urban Legends Reference Pages (snopes.com) and the Hoaxkill Service (which I found to be disappointingly incomplete). Anyway, in casting about I discovered an entire sub-industry devoted to this scam, and no wonder, considering its widespread use. According to this source, "The U.S. Secret Service gets reports of about 100 victims per day, and receives 300-500 pieces of scam literature forwarded to them each day. In Nigeria, the scam is widely known as the "419" scam, named so after the provision of the Nigerian penal code that relates to fraud."

A hundred "victims" per day? That implies that people are actually falling for these cons, juvenile as they might seem. Indeed, "According to the State Department, by 1996 over 15 people had been murdered after they travelled to Nigeria to participate in this 'opportunity.' Even more have been beaten or subject to threats and extortion." This is - or can be - serious business. But what can you do about it?

Well, one group has come up with a rather satisfying approach: why not fight fire with fire? Their counter-tactics involve sending a serious-sounding reply to the initial scam letter, then intentional leading the scammers down the primrose path via a serious of increasingly comic communications. The Scamorama website documents these email exchanges, message-by-message, and the results border on hilarious (and, at times, a tad profane and just a little on the, um, racy side). Apparently, many people are now resorting to this subtle form of retribution, and forwarding the results for posting to the website.

A good example is the account entitled "JUAN PEREZ MUNOZ DE BARATA TUDELA LOVEDAY VERSUS YET ANOTHER MRS. ABACHA & HER LAWYER." It's rather lengthy, but it takes time to set up a good counter-scam, particularly one involving your beneficent cousin Jed Clampett, who, unfortunately, goes for a three-hour cruise - just a three-hour cruise - and becomes lost at sea (albeit with a very able skipper), only to be rescued by an intrepid Captain named Picard. Meanwhile, the scammers continue to express their condolences and concern about the family travails of their intended, but beloved, victim.

Then there's the give-and-take between the scammers and a gentleman named "Kristopher Kringle"; this one is still ongoing as of mid-January.

Some of these counter-scammers have actually succeeded in convincing the scammers to send them money...not much, but surely enough to claim a moral victory of sorts. Things like this sort of give you hope for the world, you know?

But then there are things like this. I saw the following post on another local blog, which shall remain nameless to spare the owner embarrassment, even though the message was a reply, not a post:

I think the idiocy of this statement is self-evident, so I'll say nothing more about it than this: it's OK...it's even good to bash "The Media," but only if you can do so without looking worse than those you bash.