Tired of the Nigerian scam? Join the party:
It has been described as the internet’s first blood sport and is fast becoming one of the web’s favourite pastimes. Fed up with having their inboxes clogged with emails from Nigerian fraudsters promising untold riches, the victims are finally hitting back.
Scam-baiting – replying to the emails and stringing the con artists along with a view to humiliating them as much as possible – is becoming increasingly popular with more than 150 websites chronicling the often hilarious results.
The site most prominently featured in the Guardian article is 419eater.com, in case you want to have a look-see.
Honestly, who would respond to the Nigerian e-mails? It’s so tragic.
(My favorite reverse Nigerian scam is the Cthulu scam, which I have mentioned here before.)
Great links. What a story.
Have you ever read “The Spam Letters”? They’re a riot. The guy who runs the site has been scam-baiting spammers for years. He has a whole section just about the Nigerian e-mail scam.
Here’s the URL – http://www.thespamletters.com
There’s another one I read awhile ago where a different guy was asked to send a photocopy of his passport. He made one up, using the name “James Tiberius Kirk,” and using Shatner’s photo. He figured no one has never heard of Star Trek.
He was wrong. The scammer had never heard of Trek and thought the passport was real. The whole thing was hysterical.
Scam? Hey, that guy’s legitimate. $22M and he’s only keeping 20%. I think that’s fair, considering the number of E-mails he’s had to send out. I sent him $50K to help cover his expenses. That’s the least I could do, and I expect a 100-fold return on my investment when he sends me $5M after it’s cleared the Nigerian banks. I’ll let you know when the check arrives and we’ll have one hell of a party. :o)
I had no choice, I had to reply at least to one of them, I was too curious.