Who Scams The Scam Artists Themselves? - 08/10/05

As we all know, if you take the word 'Nigeria', add the letters S, C and M, then rearrange the letters and take a good few out, you're left with the word "SCAM". It's a scary coincidence, sure, but some experts even go as far as to call it proof that any e-mails sent to you from Nigeria are a hoax.

Do not trust them. The most common scam e-mails follow the format of "Hi, I'm Troy McClure, president of some bank in Lagos, Nigeria. Dude, some rich guy just died and left three trillion Nigerian lira or whatever money we use over here. We can't track.down any relatives, so we're going to give you the money. We just need a small deposit of $1m in order to release the money."

Bizarrely, people actually fall for this kind of stuff all the time. But not I. This one time, my mum went on holiday to Kenya. "She" sent me some e-mail saying that something along the lines of: "Hi son, I tried to call you but we can't get through to you. This is really important. The plane got stuck in a storm on the way to Kenya and we had to stop in Nigeria for to refuel. I went into a nearby town to get some coffee and when I came back the plane had left. All of my money was onboard. I need you to go online and order me some extra tickets - I'm stranded out here!". Now, whoever sent me that e-mail went to great lengths to trick me- not only was it sent from my mum's actual hotmail account, but they called me by name and somehow knew that my mother was on holiday in Africa. But they made one fatal error: the second I saw the word 'Nigeria', I knew they were trying it on.

Hah. You've got to wake up reasonably early in the afternoon to get one past ol' Zeke. In other news, my mum must be having a really good time in Kenya 'cause I haven't heard from her in months. She was only supposed to be gone a week! Crazy woman, never know what she's gonna do next.

But if you're still not convinced about how sketchy Nigeria is, here's some terrifying facts that I either found on the Internet or overheard someone saying at the bus-stop:

- Nigeria's scam trade generates a third of the country's national income!
- Nigeria is bigger than Portugal, but nowhere near as big as Russia!

That's about all I can think of right now, but I think you'll find that the figures speak for themselves. However, there is no need to lay awake at night living in constant fear of Nigerian e-mails. Seriously. In fact, they can be quite fun. Even profitable. Let me share with you my 12-step method on how to turn the tables on these scam artists, or at least make them look unwittingly silly (most of these people can't speak English) on your own personal weblog.

All of the following e-mails are completely real and not made up by me. If you don't believe me, e-mail me and I'll give you the password to my hotmail account and you can check for yourse.... hey, hang about, you scammer! I see what you're trying to do... you can't trick me that easily. All of my e-mails below are in blue, just to clear things up. For reference, this paragraph is red (blue is considered by some to be the opposite).

From: James Dale
Private Email: jamesdale333@mail.ru
Subject: Inheritance Fund

Dear Sir/Madam I apologize if the contents hereunder are contrary to your moral ethics, But please treat it with absolute secrecy and personal courtesy. I am James Dale an Auditor of a commercial Bank here in the United Kingdom, in the the process of auditing our bank accounts I and one of my colleagues discovered that there is a dormant account valued at the sum $10,000,000.00 (Ten million united states Dollars) and after due verification of this account we discovered that the account owner is late and that is why the account has been dormant and as such a $10,000,000.00 has been lying in the bank unclaimed. The idea of presenting somebody who is not related to our deceased customer to act as his next of kin came into our mind, that is how and why we have contacted you to present you as his next of kin , so that the $10,000.000.00 will be paid to you and we can both disburse the fund according to the percentage we will agree on. In view of this, I am seeking for your co-operation and understanding to stand as the next of kin to our deceased customer, to enable us claim the fund from my bank. Hence, If this proposal is OK by you and you do not wish to take undue advantage of my trust, then I hope to bestow on you. Please kindly get back to me immediately, strictly via my private email address only: jamesdale333@mail.ru to enable me enlighten you on how we are to proceed. On getting your response, we shall agree on the percentage of disbursing the $10,000,000.00 between us, as we intend to invest part of our own share in real estate business in your country, and we would appreciate if you can put us in the right part investing in your country. I will not contact any person or company until I hear from you, so as to enable me decide on what to do next. Be rest assured that this business is 100% risk free. We await for your prompt response.
Regards, James Dale

Ten million United States Dollars??? Jeezus! I don't know how much that is in UK sterling, but it's probably enough to buy a couple of packs of cigarettes and maybe even a new hat. But as I mentioned earlier, I'm not one to be easily fooled. For interest's sake, let's see how gullible James Dale thinks I am:

From: Zeke Iddon
RE: Inheritance Fund

James,

w0w!!!!1!!!1!

this soundz 2 good 2 B tru! 10 trillion dollorz? i dont mind how much u keep of it az long az i get a few thousand. this iz a dreem cum true as ive been speking 2 banks and stuff 2 try and raise money for my animal sacntuary. its liek a home for blind animalz and the great thing is dat we have developd a cost affective wa y of turning them into cheap fuel 4 motocycles, but da bankz and building soxieties are reluctent 2 put up the cash we need. weve got a few thousand saved up but need more.

if u acn help me get sum of this dead blokes monies it wud be a dreem cum true and u wud help me CHANGE THE WORLD wiv my new (enviromently freindly) fuel. Teel me wot 2 do next plz

very trustingly,
Zeke


And yes, no matter how stupid I decided to act, he still sent out the standard issue "If you want the money, send us $100000" e-mail. I carried on acting like a dickhead for a while before realising he probably wasn't even reading my replies, so quickly got bored of that. This next chump, however, got everything that came to him (again, my e-mails are in blue for clarity. Fun fact: there aren't many naturally blue foods.)

From: Steve Shesol

Hello,
I am a representative of a firm namedsuzzybreekstore.inc based in canada in which we have astore branch located in Lagos,Nigeria. We are based on the importation your item and wehave thereby seen your products facinating and we will beintrested in making good enquiries of them. We will like all order to be shipped directly toour store branch in Lagos,Nigeria.Our mode of payment willbe by CREDIT CARD.The courier service that will be preferedwill be either UPS or DHL courier services. We will want you to get back to us if you will beintrested in dealing with us so that we can send in ourorders asap.
Best Regards.
steve.


From: Zeke Iddon

What?

Sincerely,
Zeke


From: Steve Shesol

Hello,
Thanks for your response i will want you to send me your website so that i can choose the items i need in mystore.
Regards.


From: Zeke Iddon

Uh, I think you want the site address. It's www.tittybiscuits.net . There are a few products here that you may find of interest, but please let me know if you are interested in some 'special' products that aren't made available to everyone (if you know what I mean).

I look forward to doing business with you.
Zeke Iddon


From: Steve Shesol

Hello,
I want you to mail me the products you have in yourstore so that i can choose the ones that are best and goodto me.Get back to me asap.


Obviously I have no idea what products he's talking about, and neither does he by the looks of things. When I mentioned 'special' products in my last e-mail, I had the idea of sending him to a secure page on this site which listed illegal sentry guns available for mail order, complete with pictures of the automated machine guns featured in the film 'Aliens' and the Ed 209 robot from 'Robocop', just to see if he'd be silly enough to take the bait. The more I thought about it, the more I realised it was a lame idea and probably wouldn't have amounted to much fun. However, on doing some research into Nigerian scams, another, more masterful plan was hatched.
Let me explain the scam in order to set the scene:

this one is often used particularly on semi-pro artists, so for sake of argument let's we're a commercial artist. Somebody, let's call him Reggie (because I like that name), e-mails you and says "Hey, I like your artwork and want to buy shed loads of it for my Nigerian mansion. I will pay by cheque or credit card upfront". Of course, being a struggling artist, you're going to be flattered and (hopefully not) suckered into the deal. You ask Reggie what he wants, he tells you and sends you a cheque or credit card details… generally for the sum of tens of thousands. You say "Yep, I'm fed-exing them to your (fake) address. Cheers for the money." However, the second you do that, Reggie will tell you that he's found a cheaper shipping option of his own and would like to use that service, and the top-and-bottom of it is that he's overpaid you on shipping by a couple of grand. Of course, he'd like a refund. You're all like, "cool, Reg has paid up-front, seems like a trustworthy chap, so I'll just wire him the money."

Big mistake. You're left with a fake cheque or stolen credit card details, and apparently it takes the bank a stupidly long time to figure that out. Reggie? He's long gone. You've either given him lots of your own dough, or money out of the cheque that has 'cleared', but will eventually bounce. Sounds like a very hard scam to pull off, but like I said, things like this earn Nigeria a third of it's gross national profit. Plus, Nigeria is much bigger than Portugal, which makes sense when you think about it.

So anyway, enough waffling. Now that I was privvy to the above information, it was time to put my plan into action.


From: Zeke Iddon

Mr. Shesol,
It's Zeke here from www.tittybiscuits.net. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, but we have had some technical difficulties with one of our factories.

We have finally produced the products you requested, if you are still interested. If so, please e-mail me your postal address and the amount of products needed (at a price of £10 per product, maximum order 1000 products).

I'm afraid I won't be able to ship the products until I have recieved your mailing address and payment, either by credit card or cheque, for the product. However, I will not authorize the payment at my end until I know you safely have the products you requested.
Hope to hear from you soon. Sorry for the delay and thanks for your business.

Zeke Iddon


From: Steve Shesol

Hi,
I would be interest in ordering the maximum amount of product and have sent a cheque for $10000 dollars with another amount of $6000 for the shipment of your item. Please let my know immediately on receiving the payment.
Thanks


Things were going swimmingly and all according to my master plan. About a week passed, and I kinda forgot about the check, but sure enough the money came through. I wish I had a scanner handy at the time so I could show you the cheques – they truly were bad fakes and I can’t imagine anyone falling for this dirty trick. After promptly feeding them through the shredder, I got back to my e-mails and let him know I’d received his money and that I was awaiting instructions for payment. Within minutes (literally) I had an e-mail from my mate Steve.


From: Steve Shesol

Urgent,
Thank kindly for letting myself know of your confirmed payment. We are having problems how ever as our manager has found a cheaper more reliable courrier for shipment. It is very important that you send us the $6000 dollars back to us as we have arranging our own shipping costs. Please keep our payment for the product but return the shipment cost. If you can do this by credit card please email me or I will send a address for sending a check.
With great urgency


Being an editor by trade, I was itching to rip apart his grammar and spelling. I also wanted to point out that if you’re going to pretend to be a successful businessman representing a recognised company, punters may find it suspicious that they cannot find any mention of either you or said company anywhere on the net. But hey, things were going exactly as per plan. I would like to mention once more that everything written up here actually happened… so what plan, you cry? Watch closely:

From: Zeke Iddon

Steve,

I’m glad you found a less expensive shipping company. I mean, jeez, $6000 was steep, although admittedly 10,000 of the globally acclaimed titty-biscuits products is worth it. I think they will do well in your store.

I will happily refund the $6000. However, as your cheques are international, my bank is demanding £20 UK pounds in order to present them to the cashier. If you could send this amount in cash to the following address then I will e-mail you with my credit card details so you can deduct the $6000 from your order. I hope e-mailing of my credit card details is okay? I’d prefer not to send a cheque, I don’t find them trustworthy enough.

Thanks for your help, and sorry for the inconvenience. I very much appreciate your interest and look forward to hearing from you.
Zeke Iddon


Alas, this is were the story pretty much ends. I never heard from Steve Shesol again. Well, at least not via e-mail. Yep, about five days after sending the previous e-mail, I received an envelope from Scamgeria. There was no letter inside or anything, just two printed notes. One was a five pound note, the other was a ten pound note. Smashing! It wasn’t the twenty I’d asked for… either ‘Steve’ messed up his currency conversion or decided that fifteen was enough to convince me he was legitimate. Either way, to my total (and hopefully shared) disbelief, I’d managed to scam someone that was trying to scam me. It was only £15, sure, but it felt like a massive victory on my part. Knowing, at this point, that this escapade was going to end up here, I thought I’d write a satisfying conclusion to this blog entry and subsequently e-mail it to my benefactor.


From: Zeke Iddon

Mr. Shesol,
Just to confirm that I have received your payment and everything has gone ahead, as planned.
Your imaginary products were shipped onto an EasyCruise ferry this morning, and are currently on their way to the moon.

As for the £15 you kindly sent, cheers sucker!

Yours very sincerely,
Mr. Zee


Next time, I’m very much thinking about hitting for a higher amount. This guy didn’t even hesitate sending me cash, purely because he though I was the sucker and he was going to get thousands in return for his ‘investment’. I urge everyone who is lucky enough to get this sort of opportunity that lands in their inbox to try the same. Hey, what have you got to lose?

Well, I guess there’s the “giving your home address to experienced criminals who would most likely come around to your house and kill you for your half-finished tube of toothpaste” factor. But in my mind, that’s a chance worth taking for fifteen smackers.

Lucrative times, lucrative times.