hile the infamous "Nigerian" email scams are the most famous, there are tons of other email rip offs out there. I don't talk about them often; this isn't a consumer protection site for the clueless, but I do mention them when I get a really funny one, or the issue pops up in the news.

More recent updates are added on top.

December 8, 2003

You have to love this one.

Computer buffs in New Zealand are "baiting" Nigerian fraudsters in a game dubbed the new internet bloodsport, a report said today.

The ultimate goal is to turn the fraud back on the Nigerians, but authorities warn the game is dangerous and are urging people not to play. Scam-baiters start by replying to emails from African fraudsters trying to fleece recipients with fake charities or investments. The baiters pretend to fall for the scams while secretly humiliating the fraudsters, whom they call "lads."

Typically, they make endless demands for proof of identity that force the lads to forge passports, bank accounts and documents. Sometimes the lads are told to photograph themselves in ridiculous poses, with loaves of bread on their heads, or clutching signs with secret passwords.

Pity they can't figure a way to actually make the would-be scammers kill themselves, but I guess so long as the thieves' time is being wasted it's all for the good.

August 18, 2003

I get several of the "Nigerian Scam Emails" a day, though they're not all Nigerian anymore.  Obviously scam artists around the world have heard plenty about the astonishing gullibility of people when presented with transparent scams in their in boxes, and are emulating the original Nigerian crooks, with varying degrees of success.  Lately I've gotten a bunch of them from people claiming to be in the Philippines, and the following one came in today, from parts unknown.  It's definitely the laziest one I've ever seen.

Good Day,

I hope this email meets you well, My late father left with me with the sum of US$62 Million Dollars (Sixty two Million Dollars). I need a honest foreigner who will assist me and finance this money so that i never have to look for money again in my life.

I am only 22yrs old and i want to invest in real estate, buying of cars, banking, Import and Export and other types of profitable investment. If you need to know, my late father was the minister of Justice and he was killed few years ago, i am the only son in my family and i got your name while searching on the internet for help? if you can help i will gladly give you 30% of the total sum, for your effort, help and advice. since you will be the one in charge and ontrol i cannot cheat you. The money is being kept in a security company, due to my age and huge amounts policy, i cannot claim this money as the next of kin. I am a young man and do not have so much experience in this type of business so whatever you decide i will do. I need your help in transferring the money out of my father's account into your safe account, where it will be safe. We have to move the money out of the country very fast. This business is private and Personal. My confidential email address is: 08tony@web-mail.com.ar

when you reply please leave your confidential phone no and email and i will surely get back to you. I look forward to hearing from you. 

Yours truly, 

Tony Oyofo

You'll note that he hardly put any effort into it, and appears to have forgotten things.  For one thing, he didn't put any details into this that would make anyone believe it for a second. I mean come on, he didn't even say what country he's pretending to be in.  Plus he makes it just absurdly trusting, like he'll just give you full control of everything, with no strings attached, and even promise you 30% of the money for nothing more than your bank account information to transfer the money to you.

And anyway, would that even work?  I mean obviously no one on earth has millions of dollars and just needs an anonymous foreign partner to transfer it to. At least that's obvious to me and you guys, but apparently not to lots of other people, since various scammers have made hundreds of millions of dollars by scamming tens of thousands of people with this whole thing. But anyway, let's pretend that there really is someone out there who wants to transfer $50m to your bank, and they're happy to give you 10% of it for the trouble.  Would that be possible?

As far as I know, virtually every country on earth has all sorts of anti-drug laws and anti-money laundering bank rules, and any transfer of over $100,000 or something like that is scrutinized and analyzed.  And somehow I imagine that a transfer of oh, $40,000,000 would set off a few alarm bells. Whether the bank would stop you from getting the money or from re-transferring it is beyond me, but they'd have to get the FBI involved, if you were in the US, anyway, and investigations would commence.

Just out of curiosity, I wondered where he was.  Did he just forget to say which country his father stole all of that money from?  His email is as he says it, with the .ar suffix.  That's not one I knew, but checking it out showed that .ar is in Argentina.  However as the @web-mail.com.ar is a pretty obvious tip to, it's a web mail account, one that probably anyone could sign up for.

There's no point to this, and I'm certainly not interested enough to investigate further, or try to get the idiot to call me so I can screw him around on his scams. I just found it a woefully-lazy attempt at a Nigerian Scam mail impersonation.  Nevertheless, people are so gullible that I wouldn't be surprised to find out this guy has made a million from this by now.

February 22, 2003

Some old man in Czechoslovakia blew away a guy at the Nigerian embassy, apparently pissed off after being ripped off in the 419 Fraud, AKA the "Nigerian email scam".

The scam called 419, after the relevant section of Nigeria's criminal code, begins with offers of sums beyond the dreams of avarice in exchange for use of a Western bank account.

It's not about raising a bank account, though. Those foolish enough to respond to the scheme soon find there's a host of problems in moving the money, which is supposedly held with in a secret safety deposit safe or similar. Various fees and bribes are requested from the victim.

The scam, and the sums being paid out, escalates until an attempt is made to coax the victim to travel abroad to another country, where he's vulnerable, and where the police don't care.

There's no telling if the shooter actually got someone involved in the scam(s) (you just know half the Nigerian government is in on it), or if the scammers claimed to be the guy he shot, or if he was just pissed and wanted to shoot any Nigerian official he could get in his sights, after being taken for his life savings.

There isn't even any confirmation it's anything to do with 419 yet, but that didn't stop the major media from reckless speculation, and I'm not letting it stop me either.  And anyway, why the hell else would a 76 year old Czech shoot a Nigerian diplomat?

If it turns out that the diplomat actually was in on the scams, they should give the shooter a medal.  I get 50 emails a week about that shit, and I would happily blow away anyone I knew for sure was involved in it, if the opportunity arose.  I'm willing to extend the same courtesy to pretty much anyone who sends a lot of spam, come to think of it, regardless of their continent of origin.  Just one of the many sacrifices I'm making on my inexorable path towards sharing the 2014 Noble Peace Prize.

September 24, 2002

I get a dozen versions of the Nigerian Email Scam a week at this site, and hundreds more at the D2 site.  As I've mentioned in the past, I find it just unimaginable that anyone falls for it, but every article about it says the hoaxers are clearing tens or hundreds of millions a year with it.  I think those figures are pulled from thin air, where they hear of one person who did, and estimate that if 10million people got the hoax, and just 1/1000 fell for it... Then follows speculative math.

Well, here's at least one person who did fall for it, to an incredible extent.  Over two million dollars of falling.

The FBI said Poet, a bookkeeper for a small Berkley law firm, embezzled $2.1 million from the firm's accounts between February and August, after scam organizers persuaded her to wire huge amounts of money to bank accounts in South Africa and Taiwan to expedite the transfer of money to the United States.

Hoppe said the perpetrators of the fraud contacted Poet by fax in January and promised her that all she had to do to get her $4.5-million fee was to open a bank account. After she agreed to help, Hoppe said, the scammers told Poet the money was on its way. But as inevitably happens, Hoppe said, they later told Poet there were problems -- fees, commissions and taxes that had to be paid. In the months that followed, Hoppe said, Poet wired amounts ranging from $9,400 to $360,000 to offshore accounts. She never received her fee.

"It's unbelievable that she fell for this," said FBI Special Agent James Hoppe, who is investigating the case. "She was gullible -- gullible and had access to $2.1 million."

I figure she got into it, and kept getting deeper and deeper, figuring all along once she got her $4.5m (or perhaps the whole $18m, if she was thinking to be tricky) she could replenish the accounts and no one would be the wiser.

This sort of thing looks like such an incredibly easy way to get rich.  Just move to some 3rd world country with no real government infrastructure, or even a first world one with banking privacy laws that protect criminals (Switzerland, perhaps) and start mailing out the scams.  You don't even need to claim to be from Nigeria, much less in Nigeria.  It can't be that hard to talk people into this, as often as people fall for it and as gullible as people are.

If you've somehow not been fortunate enough to receive such letters yet yourself, I quoted one I got here in the May 2002 mailbag, and put in a bunch of links to sites that discuss this sort of thing.  It's the last entry on the page, so scroll down.

May 23, 2002

I laughed when I saw this one.  South African police have have arrested six people in connection with those ubiquitous Nigerian Money fraud emails.  I get them all the time at the d2 email.

Four of those detained were Nigerian, one was Cameroonian and the sixth was South African. Police in South Africa believe that the six are part of an international fraud and drug-dealing cartel, sending out thousands of e-mail and letters in an attempt to defraud. Police seized a large amount of drugs, as well as computer equipment and false identification papers.

Figures they're drug runners, not just assholes trying to bilk people with lies about money transfers.  What I find amazing is that they've apparently actually taken people in with the scam, and made millions of dollars. It reminds me of the scams pulled on Bnet, where people are always emailing me at the d2 site crying about falling for the most obvious confidence job.  I figure those are just dopey kids though, naive and easy meat, and that adults with real money and real things to lose, (not just game items/characters) are too cautious and smart to risk real money on some obvious bullshit. Yet again, I have overestimated the general public's intelligence.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.