What happens when you reply to a Nigerian scam e-mail

I have just received some good news in my inbox. Here is how it starts:

Greetings to you. With due respect, I am Mr. Lukas Ociuo (esq), the legal director here at the Ministry of Works Abidjan Ivory Coast.

Mr Ociuo is a very assiduous man. He wishes to send to me the money due to a deceased contractor, who shares my surname and might therefore be related (building contractors called Finkelstein abound in the Ivory Coast I understand). And all I have to do is reply to his email.

It's as easy as that! Perhaps I should get Fraser Nelson in on the deal. He can use the proceeds to cut taxes.

Anyway, I was idly wondering what would happen if I replied and I came across this fabulous, laugh out loud funny, exchange that took place when Will Sturgeon of Silicon.Com replied to a Nigerian email scammer.

Will began with this masterful reply:

Dear Madu Frank,

Thank you very much for contacting me with this wonderful offer, it sounds almost too good to be true. It's amazing, only this morning I was saying how I could do with having a bit more money - I must be a very lucky man.

Of course I would be interested in helping, but would also be very interested to hear who recommended me, as you say you have been told that I am a "reliable" and "trustworthy" person. I assure you I am, but would like to know who I have to thank for this wonderful opportunity.

Just to clarify, you say I stand to get 30 per cent of the total money transferred - this is £6.75m, right? Wow!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Now read on.

Comments

[Ben Maccer]

You almost feel sorry for the scammers who get baited back. These people seem to do it professionally: http://www.419eater.com/

[Josh]

If you want to chalk up a true win against these scammers, you have to make them send you money. It can be done. If you have access to a premium rate fax number, persuading them to fax you many pages of supporting documentation would do it...

[GMThomson]

Do not joke about this it is a very nasty ugly business. And do not accept any invitations to go to Nigeria or anywhere else you will be kidnapped or murdered.

[errol towe]

The 419ers are only taking back ,what europeans have and still are taking from africa.
If we are to be honest,africa is being bled dry by the greedy blue chip companies. so dont be shocked that africans are taking something back.

[pernod]

The original article is almost 5 years old... come on, we can do better than recycle old news..

[Anthony]

These kind of scams wouldn't exist if brainless morons didn't keep falling for them.

[Roberto]

Here is the best site:

www.thescambaiter.com

First - never reply to the scams, let them thing your email box is not active. As soon as you respond they know they have a live box and they will pester you forever and they trade addresses with other criminals.

Remember - there is no free lunch, there is no money for you, whatever ANYBODY tells you in an unsolicited email is false and is only intended to hook you to ultimately send them money or give them your personal details. Just delete the emails and never respond to them.

[Conor O'Prolite alias Agnes Slapper]

Anyone who feels sorry for a baited scammer (or any 419 scammer) needs to lie down until the feeling goes away.
They are scum who will quite happily bleed victims dry, even of money set aside for anti-cancer drugs.
Or threaten to kill a 10 year old girl for less than $50 and a secondhand laptop.
www.scamorama.com/prolite_agnes_hitlad.html

[Terry]

Unless capital punishment is re introduced piracy and terrorism will increase hourly.

[Ralph]

After seeing the devastation these scams can cause people, no I dont feel sorry for the scammers regardless of what a baiter may have done to them.

The general rule to follow is to never ever send money to people you met on the net, regardless of what they may have told you

[Jo]

Great article. Phishing is only a problem for people who don't know about it - and sadly not everyone does. Nice way to spread the message - I hope you've saved a couple of gullible people from a lot of hassle, or the loss of a lot of money

[Bill Derbyshire]

I like it when the same messages come back like old friends. My particular favourite was the one purporting to come from Joseph Svimbi's daughter trying to export the would-be dictator's millions out of Angola.

[Peterr]

I like others felt like replying just to see what reaction I could elicit, but I worried incase there was a virus involved.
I think that I will try to annoy them with a Hotmail account next time.
I can imagine how frustrated these criminals, that is what they are, are when they are teased.

[Kered Ybretsae]

These guys seem to pop up from all over the place and it's always millions of pounds. I have won the Irish Sweepstake twice this year, also the Spanish and Italian Lotteries plus all these odd Delboys and Delgirls, with their millions. I have answered with a big ---- Off now I just leave 'em amongst the unreads.

[William Foster]

I just love this: It really tickles my warped sense of humor. One would have thought that the spammer was not so stupid that he/she did not realize he/she was being baited back. I guess this shows just how seriously stupid some people are. One wonders if they could steal a cold. In Passing I wonder why this scam has become known as the Nigerian Scam email, and if this designation could be construed as racist, and frowned on by our politically correct society?

[T]

I got scammed by a ring operating outside of London. We emailed back and forth (with some phone calls as well) for about a month. I then sent everything to LBC News to see if they could do anything with it. Nothing happened.

[Mike]

Prior to the use of e-mail in the 1970's, I received two of these scam invitations by way of handwritten letters. I also received a request from a Nigerian "boxer" to help set up matches for him in North America. I admit, that in my youth, I was tempted, however I smelled enough of a rat not to follow through with replies.

[John Rutter]

Intereting, and very amusing, that original article may be - but it's not exactly a recent story.

Shouldn't the Times be a bit more up-to-date?

[Ceri Morgan]

Another great site for this is http://www.quatloos.com/brad-c/directory01.htm

Think my personal favourite has to be 'Dr. Elvis'.

[Esther]

Cautionary tales about responding to scammers don't come much better than the one involving James Lafferty of Ennis, Co. Clare. http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2007/12/14/story50403.asp

[Keith R]

For a moment, I thought I'd gone into the Times archive. C'mon. This was old news over half a decade ago.

[Bruno]

Also famous U.S. psychotherapist, John W. Worley who ended in jail after cashing fake checks sent from Nigerian scammers as part of their 419 scam. Article in The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/15/060515fa_fact?currentPage=all

If you've fallen victim to such a scam, a good site that offers support in 8 languages is www.fraudwatchers.org

My aunt lost over $3000 to a 419 scam, and I don't consider her stupid by any means. Those scums are predators that seek out older victims.

[Ian Kemmish]

My best personal experience was a 'Russian girl'. 'She' got the usual "your letter has been automatically forwarded to the police's advance fee fraud desk, expect a reply from them posing as a victim" reply. 'She' then wrote back "I'm so happy you have decided to be my friend!"

And for sheer hilarity (in the style of Gerard Hoffnung's "French Widows"), it's hard to beat the Nigerian letters, badly mistyped, translated into Russian by Google Translate (in any case the worst of the free online services) and then posted on a Russian social site I use.

[p pakura]

Because colonialists used poor countries to make money is no reason to advocate stealing today. Everybody could dig through their family histories to find some excuse to be a criminal. These parasites are hurting these countries as nobody will do business with them now.

[bryant amper]

http://www.ebolamonkeyman.com.

Simply the best.

[Collin]

There are also lots of credit card fraud scammers who prey (or try to) on resorts / holiday properties. I receive at least one a day -- wanting to book their "family" or "clients". They always say they'll pay with a credit card. It will, of course, be a stolen card number and if you bite, they'll then either have to cancel and want a refund (via Western Union) or else they'll ask you to process a much larger amount with the difference sent (via Western Union again) to some third party.

[Dragon]

I got 2 emails within minutes on the 20th Nov. Such good news they sent it twice?
I have won £50,000 in a competition that I never entered. To claim the money they want my full name, address and telephone number. If I had entered the competition they would know this info. They also wanted to know my age, sex, marital status and occupation. Why? The only reason I could come up with was Identity Theft. This OAP could do with the money, but the rat smell put me off.

[The Definitive Polka Dot]

There are whole sites devoted to people who have had fun with the Nigerian scammers. One of them: http://www.ebolamonkeyman.com/ . It's very funny. There are several others.

I kept a scammer called "Mariam Abacha" on a string for three months, pretending she had struck lucky with a famous female Hollywood star. I pretended to be extremely interested in the scheme, but said I was surrounded by accountants and lawyers who wouldn't let me read my own emails because of begging letters, but they would let emails from my family through, so told her to sign herself, "Your loving cousin, Mariam" and her email would be sure to get through. So for three months I had a loving cousin in Nigeria.

I would keep being on the verge of following "her" instructions, then, ditz that I was, I would get distracted. Once I had a tragedy intervene. My nail girl had a heart attack and she was the only one who understood my hands, and I was distraught. Then, after not replying for a few days, despite frantic emails from my "loving cousin Mariam", I would apologise and say I had been at a board meeting of my coal mine in Hawaii, and it just made me sick that my advisors forced me to go because coal mines were so dirty with all those lumps of coal lying around. Another time, I had to visit my banana plantation in Arizona.

Then I offered to send her some of my clothes because I couldn't wear the same designer outfits twice in Hollywood. Was she a size four? If not, she probably knew some starving youngsters who were quite a small size who could wear them.

Then I was going to go to my bank in London to make the money transfer to Mariam, but guess what! The airline would not allow my five Afghan hounds to accompany me in the first class cabin and I was famous for always travelling with my five Afghan hounds! (Doubtless Mariam hit Google with that piece of information.) And then the British apparently didn't know who I was and would put my Afghan hounds in quarantine! So I couldn't go to London after all!

I've got to hand it to her. Mariam stuck with the programme, but after three months, the fun began to pall and I got a new manicurist - a gay guy who was very good with money. As I had married gay stars twice before, we were going to get married and he was going to manage all my money, so sadly, our correspondence had to end.

[Phil Payne]

Whatever happened to the old Swiss "World Telex Directory" pseudo-invoices? Not had one for years.

[AJ]

I second PERNOD's comment...

Surely a a journalist from the Times can refer its readers to more up to date sources, whilst refraining from regurgitating old news.

[Jon]

Several years ago I decided to respond to a 419 scammer, telling him that it was his lucky day, as I was in the business of helping people in his position to get funds released. I went back and forth with him for about a week, requesting HIS banking and identity information, plus requiring an advance payment from him in order to show good faith that I wasn't wasting my time. He finally gave up.

A year ago an artist friend of mine was contacted by a scammer purporting to be an art dealer in South Africa. He wanted to buy several paintings that she had on her website and to have them sent to him via a shipping service. I advised her that it smelled suspicious. She agreed and had his "shop" checked out (she has legitimate clients in ZA). Of course, it didn't exist. She told him she wasn't interested and thought that was over. A month later, she received two US Treasury checks in the mail. Very good forgeries, which she is incorporating in a collage.

[Alastair]

"The 419ers are only taking back what europeans have and still are taking from africa" - errol towe

Curious that you neglect to mention all the money Europe gives Africa for irrigation, education and infrastructure?

Somehow I doubt that the "boys from Lagos" have any interest in your perception of history, but have rather more in the pursuit of theft...