Nigeria scams are never going away.

Read this "Yahoo! millionaires" article, it's just pathetic.

[Dogza]

[money.cnn.com...]

[moishe]

heh, I came to post it but got beat, yep it is pretty sad.

[Mohamed]

it is sad!

[zCat]

Yes, terrible. It recently occurred to me that I have US$27,000,000 sitting in a safe in Madrid - to cut a long story short it formerly belonged to an acquaintance in the international corrupt dictator scene - and what with me being a civil servant in the Elbonian Government, there's no way I can get at it. So if any WW members with a legit bank account out there can stump up a couple of month's of affiliate income in used notes to my mate in Amsterdam, I'm offering a 30% cut and if you reply before the weekend I'll throw in a chance to have a crack at the US$130,000,000 fortune formerly belonging to Saddam Hussein.

[Crush]

For those of you who have not seen this:

[419eater.com...]

Read it, some of the scamming the scammers is hilarious.

[jsinger]

If it's so profitable, as all the articles say, why does that brainless and ancient scam mostly originate in one impoverished corner of the earth?

I'm just not convinced its a goldmine. Could be the real money maker is the honest guy who's selling laptops and lattes to everyone in Lagos.

[vincevincevince]

I have always been disappointed with the Nigerians as they rarely answer my emails. They have frequently offered me a cut of their money but as soon as I ask them to write to my accountant (name and email address provided to them) who has been instructed to help them in every way possible they disappear. Maybe they don't trust accountants?

Could be the real money maker is the honest guy who's selling laptops and lattes to everyone in Lagos.

That's very insightful. Pehaps the scammers are getting 'scammed' themselves. One true con will pay for years of internet cafe fees etc. if only they can get it. It's like diamond miners working their whole lives in awful conditions looking for that one stone which will allow them to retire the next day.

[jsinger]

Pehaps the scammers are getting 'scammed' themselves.

I'm pretty sure there is some element of that.

Gotta wonder about that press report of 14 year old kids wearing Rolexes in the streets of Lagos. That watch would last about a week in my son's upper class U.S. High School.

[jsinger]

Akin is, like many things in cyberspace, an alias. In real life he's 14. He wears Adidas sneakers, a Rolex Submariner watch, and a kilo of gold around his neck.

Probably, a second hand report from a Nigerian. LOL.

The cafe is crowded most of the time with other teenagers, like Akin, working for a "chairman" who buys the computer time and hires them to extract e-mail addresses and credit card information from the thin air of cyberspace.

The Chairman surely overstates to the kids the money to be made. And it makes a good story for Fortune Magazine who simply took a Nigerian's word that the watch and gold were for real. Did the reporter actually see the kid walk down the street with $20,000 worth of gold around his pubescent neck?

[Syzygy]

...a Rolex Submariner watch, and a kilo of gold around his neck.

I don't believe it states that the 14 yr old kid bought these. So they came from...

Syzygy

[Green_Grass]

It needs an ingenious mind to create a good scam..

A few months ago there was a report in Indian newspapers as to how a girl ( or was it a boy? .. one never came to know) chatted online with an American gentleman and fell in 'love' with him.. When the gentleman asked for a photo , the scamster sent the photo of one of India's most beautiful women ( Aishwarya Rai).

The guy flipped and wanted to meet urgently.. so ..he transferred USD 1500 as cost of airticket ...

Then when 'She ' did not arrive... he wrote to her again..

'She' said unfortunately due to various problems she could not fly to the U.S... Could 'she' have another USD 1500 ....

He paid again..

The newspapers came to know when he complained to the Local police with the photograph..

I have been trying to meet Aishwarya Rai for years now... and this guy had the gall to think he could marry her for USD 3000! ;-) Serves him right!

<snip>

[edited by: lawman at 9:51 am (utc) on May 25, 2006]

[jsinger]

Nigerians didn't invent that scam. Some clever Spaniard did in the 1930s, Often thought I could improve on it.