Re: OT- The Best Nigerian Scam yet
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Getting you to bring them the money is the old style of scam. They used to fish for victims by sending actual paper (snail mail) letters instead of email, too. But that leaves a clearer trail for investigation. My father's business (insurance) got a letter from one of these scammers more than a decade ago.

Now they just con people into wiring money through email and rob them without even having to meet them. And yes, people have been falling for variations on this scam for ages. The offer of 'something for nothing' just seems to render some people completely witless. What's really funny is that some people have even committed crimes with other people's money trying to get the offered loot.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,55329,00.html

A secretary at a law firm embezzled $2 million dollars from the firm's acounts and wired it to some South African scammer working this scheme. She didn't get the payoff, of course, and was discovered when the law firm's checks started bouncing.

Wired Magazine has covered this booming fraud business in the past:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53818,00.html

On the lighter side, there are people who have made a hobby of scamming the scammers. I guess it's a natural outcome of the constant annoyance of these spams. Sooner or later someone is going to decide to turn the tables. It's funny what they have been able to get some of them to do in hopes of fleecing a pigeon. But just like the victims they are seeking, the hope for free money can cloud their thinking.

http://www.419eater.com
http://www.ebolamonkeyman.com

[ April 19, 2004, 17:26: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: OT- The Best Nigerian Scam yet
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">More people than you would ever believe would. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I read somewhere (can't remember specifically, but seen it more than twice) that for any given day, there are on average 5 people waiting for a Nigerian in a hotel lobby somewhere in the world.