Interview With a Convicted 419 Scammer 184
An anonymous reader writes "Scam awareness website www.scam-detectives.co.uk has published a two part interview with convicted Nigerian 419 scammer, 'John.' 'John' talks about his experiences of scam victims, how he gains their trust and convinces them to part with their money, and how he would go back for another 'bite' after the original scam, posing as a law enforcement official who has apprehended the scammer and recovered the funds ... for a fee, of course."
Shock news! high income tempts youth into crime! (Score:3, Interesting)
Shock news. In a country where $100 a month is considered a reasonable salary and there's a lot of wealth inequality and corruption, some folk are tempted into crime when they see their friends earning $4000 a month...
So what's the solution?
Re:Haha! (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, that part made me laugh. I've never heard of the cops returning anyone's stolen property. Including the one case I know of where they caught the crooks with the property. The cops wanted my uncle to ID his property to help convict them. They never returned it to him.
"it's not crime" - it's informal parallel tax (Score:3, Interesting)
This looks made-up to me (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't believe this is real. There are a number of indicators such the language/wording/phrasing being extremely similar between both the interviewer and interviewee. Why would someone fake this? To get more traffic on their site? A con about a con...
Happened to me (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the same thing happen with my car stereo. I ID'd the stuff at the station (it was recovered a week after it was stolen) and never heard from the police again. Trying to get in touch with anyone who could deal with the problem at the PD was a pain (they insisted evidence was *never* held for more than 30 days and treated me like I was crazy), and when I finally got a hold of the evidence room officer, she couldn't give me a straight reason as to why they were still holding on to it.
Years have passed and I now live in a different city, and sometimes I wonder if my $2000 of stereo equipment still continues to sit in that evidence room. Bullshit.
Re:Shock news! high income tempts youth into crime (Score:1, Interesting)
"Close Western Union offices in Nigeria."
You have no idea of the suffering that you would cause if they were to actually do this. Far greater than any Governmental aid is the money that gets sent back home back families living and working abroad. Stop that and you would have the deaths of millions on you hands.
Greed is blind, and people are dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a news reporter, and recently saw the other side close-up. Over a period of months, a local woman had sent cash several times to a man who claimed she'd won a multi-million dollar sweepstakes. A couple of times, she called the cops, who came and talked to her, and tried to convince her it was a scam. Then she'd send more money. When she ran out of money, the scammer told her to buy jewelry on a credit card, and sent that "to be appraised." She was told the up-front payment was a "tax formality" and simply couldn't come out of her winnings, and that the jewelry would be returned to her when the transaction was completed. They also insisted she use FedEx or UPS, not U.S. Mail.
After they got the jewelry, they called and told her that a "courier" had flown into the local airport with her cash, but they hadn't been able to get a hold of her that day. So, they had put the money in a storage locker there, where it had run up another $1,700 in storage fees (in 3 days). When she went to put more jewelry on her credit card, the jeweler became suspicious, and also tried to convince her it was a scam.
Around this time, the woman called the police yet again. Working with the police in the city where she'd sent the jewelry, they raided the address and recovered her stuff. A local cop (who had been assigned to her case, and had been working with her for months) told her in person that the jewelry had been recovered and was being returned. A few hours after the police raid, the scammers called the woman, and told her they were sending the jewelry back to her (and that local police would be delivering it, to ensure it arrived safely).
Then! They told her that there had been a miscommunication, and the tax rules required the jewelry be appraised independently in two different states. The reason they were sending the jewelry back to her was that as the owner, she was the only one legally allowed to request an appraisal. The police returned her jewelry, and she sent it to the new address!
I talked with her several times over a period of weeks, corraborating everything with the police. Throughout that time, she was scared that:
1. If I wrote a story saying it was a scam, she wouldn't get her money
2. If I wrote a story saying it was a scam, the guys might come hurt her.
I, and the police, finally just gave up. People can be so blinded by greed (and dumb to start with) that they'll force this whole thing to make sense.
I call BS (Score:3, Interesting)
And honestly you get mad and hang up on the guy because he is scamming people that are desperate. I am sorry but desperate people get scammed all the time. Professional journalist or not come on getting upset is overblown in the situation the 'conversation' supposedly was going in.
This is just a scam by a 'help stop scams' website, and in my opinion much worse than running an upfront scam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner [wikipedia.org]
Re:Happened to me (Score:5, Interesting)
I was nominated to go since I had a truck. I get down there and pick up two huge boxes, get back tot he store and open them up to find boxes of shoes from at least a decade prior. They had held the evidence for at least 10 years!
While in the evidence lockup there 3ft tall pile of marijuana on a pallet and a similar pallet of "shrooms". I bet those got processed a lot quicker.
Re:Shock news! high income tempts youth into crime (Score:4, Interesting)
And yet for every down on his luck guy that turns to crime there is a down on his luck guy that stays honest. Dealing with these people as anything other than criminals basically punishes the person who is honest while rewarding the person who isn't.
I don't know what the solution is, other than continuing to support anti-corruption movements within countries and provide any support to help governments clean up their acts. When the governments become less corrupt, everybody in the country wins.
Your middle class American morality is not universal. When you are poor, your definitions of honesty and crime are very different. How is taking a few dollars from someone who is wealthy beyond your dreams (the perception of Americans) who got that way exploiting the rest of the world (cheap labor, resources, bolstering corrupt governments, starting wars) bad? You know those movies where the good guys con or rob other criminals, you root for them. When you see America as no better than any other organized crime group, then you have no problem ripping them off.
Re:Haha! (Score:5, Interesting)
A cop here in São Paulo told me a story about when his car was stolen. He got a call from the police (a different kind of police, but I don't want to go into the differences) saying his car had been recovered. He got to the place where the car was being kept pretty quickly and did the right thing: he took pictures of it. Because it was the end of the day and the processing to release his car could only be done by people who had already left, he could only get it the next day.
When he went back the next day, the car had been stripped. The stereo and a bunch of accessories and decorative items (nice hubcaps, for example) had been removed. He got access to the chief (delegado) and showed him the photographs from the previous day. The chief made an announcement that he wanted everything restored to that car within an hour or heads would roll. The next time the car's owner saw the car, it was as it had been the previous day.
I'm curious about the psychology of the victims (Score:5, Interesting)