419 Scam Blow-by-Blow 249
timbos writes "Check out this six-page dissection of a 419 scam at The Register. In particular, the fake banking site that the fraudsters set up is interesting..."
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419 Scam Blow-by-Blow
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Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
How to scam the scammers (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.419eater.com/ [419eater.com]
Re:1-419-COM-CAST. (Score:5, Informative)
If you have to mention it, your attempt failed.
Measures to address the problem = more interesting (Score:3, Informative)
Friday File: Nigeria moves to curb flow of scam-spam
8 July, 2004
by Robert Dutt
So how's your e-mail inbox today? Chances are, it's about to become a lot happier place.
According to published reports, the Nigerian department responsible for economical and financial crime has rounded up some 500 people it suspects are involved in the "Nigeria scam," the oft-documented e-mail scam that gets us so many e-mail messages from "widows of former government officials" or "personal secretaries to the deposed president."
You've all seen them -- it's a message from someone you've never heard from before, in questionable English, anxious to make a deal with you to use your bank account to get some massive sum of money out of their troubled homeland. In return, you get a sizable portion of the overall cash. And, of course, if you're silly enough to go along with it, soon they'll require you to put forward a few thousand dollars to help "clear" the money. And apparently this scam works -- because not only does it keep going, but officials in Nigeria have confiscated properties worth $500 million (U.S.) in relation to the arrests. That means that on average, each one of these individuals had $1 million worth of stuff that officials suspected came to them as a result of silly Westerners who didn't learn from their parents that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
The Nigeria scam, also known as the 419 Advance Fee Fraud for the section in the Nigerian criminal code addressing the scam, has been around for years, first coming in letters, then faxes, and really hitting its stride in the last ten years as e-mail provided a super-cheap way of trying to bilk millions from their hard-earned money all at the same time.
The identities of those arrested were not disclosed, but published reports have stated that there are a number of high-profile Nigerian names on the list, including lawyers, politicians and bankers.
And things are about to get even worse for those using the 419 scam, which can only make life better for us -- last month, the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission announced it is developing a piece of software that will be made available to ISPs and government departments worldwide to help identify mail sent by scammers based on volumes of mail and keywords in the message.
No word on what Nigeria intends to do with the $500 million collected, but we suspect you may soon be getting e-mails suggesting that for a small investment to help clear the money, you can get up to $1 million of the money you lost to Nigeria scammers back from the "government."
I only hope this roundup doesn't mess up the deal I've got cooking with Patrick Bemenge -- I'm only a few more e-mails and one cheque away from my $15 million for helping him get $150 million out of Zambia.
Scam-o-rama... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:419 is Ohio (Score:5, Informative)
1) http://www.secretservice.gov/alert419.shtml : website from the Secret Service providing info about the 419 scam
2)www.419eater.com : this website is dedicated to scambaiting and information about 419. Includes a forum. "scambaiting" is a term used often to describe when someone pretends to be interested in a scam, but tries to waste as much of the scammer's time and resources as possible, in an attempt to keep him busy on the scambaiter, rather then on a potential victim
3) Scamorama.com : similar to 419eater.com. Includes news on 419 scams, forum as well.
4) aa419.org : this is dedicated to attacking 419 scammers with websites. It does this by stealing bandwidth from scammer websites, fake banks, etc. For example, the one listed in this article, www.umicb.com, is a fake bank. This site does it by taking images from the fakebank's websites, and then reloading its webpage, thus stealing bandwidth. At the first of every month, there is a 419 "Flash mob", where about a dozen or so fake bank sites' images are loaded to a specific page, and then many, many people go to these sites, in an attempt to shut down as many sites as possible.
5) if you do a search on google for "419 scam", there are also lots of sites.
Re:Did anyone get... (Score:4, Informative)
What do you mean new? I've been getting 419 spam for years which contains links to news sites that support the story. For a while, I was collecting the different ones just for fun, and of the 800 or so such messages I got in about six months, almost 200 have references to legit news sites....
Re:Greed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mother nature at work. (Score:4, Informative)
Not really. Statistically the poor and uneducated tend to have MORE children than eductaed middle class and above families. Take a drive though your local ghetto/trailer park and check out the preganant teenage high school dropouts with three kids trailing behind them.
This natural selection thing has got some bugs.
Re:Yikes (Score:4, Informative)
You might find this book [amazon.com] a fascinating read. It was written in the 1800s
Report it to the Secret Service (Score:2, Informative)
419.fcd@usss.treas.gov
I really don't know what the feds do with these, but I haven't recieved any 419 scam mail for a while.
I imagine that 419 scammers don't like being investigated by Patriot-Act-empowered feds who have the right to hold people indefinitely without charges and don't require warrants for search and siezure.
usbank spoof warning (Score:4, Informative)
The whole purpose to steal ID PINS and Passwords.
If you are a usbank member, beware any mail claiming need you to log in for some security check.
Re:Just plain stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who is curious about those movie/phone/internet kiosk commercials you're always seeing on the SciFi channel ought to check out kioskscams.com. According to this site (set up by one of the victims) they're all shell companies being run by the same group of criminals operating in Florida.
These guys collect the money under a shell corporation, declare bankruptcy, then move on to a new set of victims under a new corporate name. Neither the state of Florida nor the U.S. government has moved against them yet. At $20K (or more) per victim, the kiosk scammers make 419 scammers look like petty thieves by comparison.
Re:1-419-COM-CAST. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The 419 scammers are hilarious! (Score:3, Informative)
Don't underestimate Nigeria - it's a big place, and it has a lot of oil.
Project Gutenberg has this online (Score:4, Informative)
Best 419: Mark Whitacre at ADM (Score:2, Informative)
ADM & Mark Whitacre [niu.edu]
Re:Article quote: (Score:3, Informative)