Forum Moderators: buckworks
Next day, the same bozo phones at 1:45 PM and requests 60 of those same expensive items (about $10,000 worth) and demands that they go out to him immediately!
Cute, eh!
We usually deal with such nonsense by telling the caller that we require a cash wire transfer to our special bank account. We keep the call on hold after telling him that our security department will give him details. When we finally answer, the line is always dead.
Just imagine if these guys turned their hands to legit business, they could wipe the floor with us all. Their so inventive and original.
Lady claims she was victim of the scam and is now in Nigeria with no money and needs help.
All contrite about how stupid and greedy she was. Learned her lesson, blah, blah.
Send money.
EVO
Lady claims she was victim of the scam and is now in Nigeria with no money and needs help.
Hilarious!
Original 419 scam targets the greedy. Your new one goes after the righteous. A few include some element of both: the huge fund to be divided would be used for an immoral purpose unless moved out of the country.
Greed AND Righteousness. That'll work!
Tell them its fine, and their stuff will be ready to go by close of business.
Let them get all greedy for a bit. Then, when they call wondering where the goodies are (after bragging to their bosses about the nice juicy shipment on it way) tell them company policy says you need shipping fees in cash, via Western Union. These shipping fees will be quite large, usually $200-300.
This is called 'freight bait' and was invented by legendary scambaiter TheFailure.
Once you have the scammer's cash, you must send him his order. This should not be from your choicest stock :)
.
The last one was a guy yesterday(mr. Smith) who wanted his package EXPRESS delivery to Nigeria... So I told him "Yes, sir it is all pakced up and will be in your hands on tuesday by 10:00am..." LOL
MY REPLY: JUST send us the MONEY I will pay all the fees LOL
I see that I am not the only person wasting the time of these scammers. If everybody answered the emails, they would spend all day trying to sift through them. Making it a somewhat useless venture and hopefully resulting in them getting a real job.
Absolutely. Similarly, when I get those automated phone calls, I don't hang up. I put my receiver down on the desk to tie up the callers line as long as possible. (assuming I have some open lines)
The absolute worst thing that can happen to a 419 email scammer is for his 10,000,000 outgoing emails to produce 1,000,000 responses. :)
Oh I know this one! Its the bouncing check for lots and lots where by the time you find out you've already sent loads of cash back to them, and the goods, hopefully.
Tell them 'fine' don't even cash it, make up a fake western union money transfer control number, (or better still Moneygram) and see how many trips they make to cash it.
Moneygram is better. You can make it for 10 times what they ask for but oops, you put a neighboring country on it by mistake - and they have to cash those in the exact branch specified..
You might also like to send them their goods.
They have to send DHL themselves, at their own expense. Its company policy for international shipments.
Don't think of these guys as scammers. Think of them as cutting edge environmentalists who pay DHL to take your heaviest trash away.
.
Think of them as cutting edge environmentalists who pay DHL to take your heaviest trash away.
Great idea. Many years ago, when NY City had a long garbage collectors strike, I remember reading about some guy who gift wrapped his trash every day and left it on the seat of his convertible to be stolen.
At least you have to give them credit for persistance :)
finally, the gov't is doing something about it
Not a chance. Nigerian letter scams have gone on for 30 years, thru many gov't changes.
How did those old letters get thru the Lagos Post Office without the gov't knowing?
So you mean the two scam emails I got today were really on the level?
I posted my car for sale on Craigs(...), and within a day got 2 hits from the Nigerian scammers. In both cases, they try to negotiate and claim they want the car shipped abroad, ask for pictures and then it comes...they will send me a check, asking me to give the difference to the shipping company when they come to pick it up along with the title to the car in their name.
If an ecommmerce site gets hit by something like this, then shame on them. But how can a non-professional (web/ecommerce) know about it?
hold on, if you want to sell stuff then you must be prepared for the risks whoever you are. taking the auto example, surely if you are trying to sell your auto on ebay or through classified ads you are trying to get more money than if you just went to the local dealer and selling to them. therefore you are hoping for greater gain at the price of exposing yourself to greater risk.
there is no such thing as an amateur seller, if you are trying to sell things you are in the game and exposed to the risks same as everybody else ... it is your job to protect yourself.
i always laugh at ebay listings that say, "we always get proof of posting, the responsibility is yours once we have shipped the item" -- no way, until i get my goods the responsibility is the seller's.
everyone has a weak or silly moment but generally a lot of this stuff is common sense, you don't need to be in business to know that they are scams, just like you don't need to be a doctor to know that those snake pills don't make you bigger.
Absolutely! I've gotten many emails asking if we ship to nigeria, take credit cards, and if yes, send them my website address so they can see what products they want.
I'm insulted by those. At least put some imagination into the scams. Some of these guys are just getting lazy.
Meanwhile, the police are laughing their *ss off.
It is so satisfying to know that I am wasting their time and money.
As said above, sometimes it is just best to have a policy barring orders from certain places.
I run few dating sites and god know.. how much these nigerian irritates us.
we have made mail filters so that no mail passes without admin approval. because they used to send spams with the claiming money sob stories.
we receive monthly almost more than 10,000$ payments with stolen credit cards from nigeria. but now we are used to it.. we dont capture any payments which is from nigeria or related countries.
In India now a days a nigerian is getting cauth by police every month. they taken so much money from innocent people and now govenment is in action and we have special police cell for nigerians.. they come here to collect money and then they live in our jail forever.
I had a 23 y.o. Nigerian girl tried to solicit me on a jewish dating service for a similar scam. Needless to say that the probability of having a Jewish Nigerian is as likely as having a Jewish Pope! LOL
Anyway . . . I agree that if I could get a group of honest Nigerians to focus their efforts on online marketing biz dev. . . somebody could make a fortune.
I had a 23 y.o. Nigerian girl tried to solicit me on a jewish dating service for a similar scam.
Oh! THAT IS WACKY AND ZANY! Most likely that 23 year old Nigerian girl was a 40-something male.
I am tired of these nigerians myself even though i happen to be one.
[edited by: lorax at 4:45 pm (utc) on Aug. 31, 2005]
[edit reason] No URLs please [/edit]
