I actually found this one to be so bad, I was somewhat amused. From an email address in the Netherlands:
ONLINE NOTIFICATION OF WINNING [of winning?]
The British National Lottery, [no salutation, but in form of one; why is a notification of winning a British lottery coming from a Netherlands address?]
Wishes to Congratulate [cap?] you on your success as one of our Ten(10) Star Prize Winner [no "s"] of the Online International Awareness Promotion (IAP) [where's the "O"?] held 14th August, 2008 in London. This makes you the proud owner of a prize of £1,856,652 Pounds [pound symbol and pounds spelled out, and incorrectly capitalized]. To begin processing of your prize. [why does the sentence stop here?]
Contact claims officer via below informations [informationS?]:
Name: Bar Janet Wasborn ["Bar?"]
Phone: +447011137932
E-mail:jwasborn12@live.com [odd email address for a claims officer of the British Lottery]
Contact him [a "him" named "Janet"?] with your Serial No: S/N-472-9768-79 [why does this look suspiciously like a Social Security number?]
Also provide listed informations: [Again, "informationS"]
Names: [another extra "s"]
Address:
Sex:
Marital Status:
Age:
Occupation:
Phone no:
Country:
Yours sincerely,
Roland Holland [They couldn't think of a name that didn't rhyme? Or be the same as the country they are emailing from?]
Senior Claims Officer.
Het UMC St Radboud staat geregistreerd bij de Kamer van Koophandel in het handelsregister onder nummer 41055629. The Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre is listed in the Commercial Register of the Chamber of Commerce under file number 41055629. [What the heck does the above have to do with the British National Lottery?]
It is that I am to be thanks to you all for your acknowleging this communcation.
While the entire thing is bad, I always thought that "Roland" was pronounced "Roe-land" (as in "row, row, row your boat") so that "Roland Holland" wouldn't actually rhyme--it would just be a dopey name.
Has anyone ever responded to one of these just to see what follows? I recently received one that had a foreign (Nigerian?) phone number with it and thought about calling to see how the conversation would go. Didn't, though.
The problem with responding at all, even to send a fake response, is that you just verified you have a valid e-mail address and do open and read unsolicited mail (although depending what's embedded in the message, just opening it may also cause it to phone home to report it's hit a valid sucker address). Which tends to pretty much permanently spool up your e-mail address in the priority queue of the spammer/scammer world. That may be OK if you like getting this sort of thing (complete with malicious embedded code and who-knows-what-else), but I've always sort of viewed it as a bit like dabbling in unprotected anonymous sex. Might be fun in the short term, but might have some ugly longer-term collateral consequences.
- US Naval Captain Jean Luc Picard
- NYPD Detective John McClain
- Amish computer salsman Phillup Myanus
- Environmentalist Lisa Simpson
The John McClain one was by far my favorite. One of my buddies and I tag teamed this one. He was Sal Manilla and we were off duty cops who convinced the scammer we were going to robn the police evidence room at the Beverly Hill 90210 Police Station in order to get the money he needed us to send him. He actually went to Western Union three times(or so he said) and got mad when the money we told him was on the way never arrived. He also got mad when we didn't show up at the Lagos Airport like we promised one day, and he even sent us a picture of himself with his code name on it(Big Poppa Pump).
My zeal in answering these things is no longer the same as it gets old after a while and it's harder to convince them to send a picture of themselves doing stupid things. But it was fun for a few months.
Are ANY leftists NOT of the Jewish persuasion?
Because that's what the Babel Fish told me to write you. Now pleese provides me with the informationS I asked you for.
Kind regards,
Bar Janet
Incidentally, whenever I get one of the pump and dump ones, I wonder if I should try to short it before the spammers hit the "dump" phase.
Of course I knew what was going on (I would cash it, get the money, send it to him, and a week or so later I would learn the check was bad and have to refund the money to my account). But I wanted to have some fun.
I had a PO box, so I told him that I wouldn't end the auction early for him, but if he could overnight the check so that it got to me before it ended, I would do it. He did that, I got it, and then I wrote back and claimed I never received it, so I was going to sell it to the winner, but if he would overnight another check with an extra $500, I would cancel the other sale.
Then, I said that my other buyer was really ticked off, and was demanding another $500, so I asked for another check.
That was fun :) At least I made him pay for the costs of the checks and the shipping charges.
I replied:
Couldn't you think of a better name ass?
Jerica America.
I am a public librarian and have to occasionally try to convince people using our computers that they did not win the lottery.
The worst one was when someone "won" the "microsoft lottery" and I had to convince her it was a really bad idea that she use our scanner to email them a copy of her drivers license and social security card. She had even printed up her winning certificate they had sent her and it took several minutes of me asking questions like "did you ever buy a lottery ticket?" and "have you ever heard of this lottery before?" that maybe this was not on the up and up. She was very disappointed.
Many new computer users also believe that the banner ad or popup that tells them that they are the lucky winner of an ipod or an xbox really means that they have won one and will ask for help in filling out the contact information.
-dk
(1) Yes. Quite a few leftists are not of the Jewish persuasion.
(2) What prompted your question?
Not unless you'd like a visit from a friendly SEC inspector. According to a recent news story, they're looking at transaction records in the stocks and going after those who bought/sold close in time to the e-mails.
And have wild stories about a crazy Nigerian pharmacist who we evicted from a professional office building for non-payment of rent and who has been sending us lunatic letters for years demanding that we may him 10s of millions of $USD. (It was less in the beginning, but he keeps compounding the interest on his demands.) To my surprise and chagrin, I learned just how expensive it can be to defend against even a manifestly crazy pro se plaintiff with no case, who keeps being told no by courts, but comes back again and again. Am wary about traveling to Nigeria myself, since this deranged individual promised to see us punished for what we did to him and that he would have us arrested if we ever set foot in Nigeria. (He advised that he expected to be elected governor of the state Lagos is in, and subsequently president of Nigeria.) So, those opportunities to get rich quick there in Nigeria, I will leave them for the rest of you to realize with my blessings.
At the time a local radio station call in program covered the story and asked people who had sent money in response to such email notices (I think the host expected no one to call). The show was FLOODED by callers who told of sending thousands of dollars to blind PO boxes in foreign countries in hopes of reaping millions. With every call the host expressed amazement that people who sounded so normal and educated would fall for such scams.
I think it is an example of greed being more powerful than logic/education/common sense/etc.
I would have loved to have gotten the guy thrown in jail. However, two big problems:
1. The FBI and the Secret Service(the guys who actually deal with the Nigerian 419 scam) are flooded with this stuff. They have more than enough, and really can't do much besides warn you.
2. The guy is in Nigeria. The FBI isn't going to waste time trying to extradite a guy like this when folks like me are much more effective at wasting his time.
The first is based on a book recommendation from this site. In the book "The Informant" which I read a couple of months ago, the main figure in the book at one point had gotten taken in by one of these scams before email was common back when they were just done by fax machine. And this is a guy who was a major executive with ADM, a fortune 500 company, although he repeatedly showed really bad judgment.
The other is the worst supposed name for a phishing email that I have received. The email was from "Avon Barksdale" who, for those of you unfamilar with the show The Wire, is a murdering drug lord. If you want to get my trust, you need to at least try to do better than that.
I actually know something about international criminal enforcement. There are some initiatives you probably are not aware of (certainly going beyond just the two agencies you named) that are intended to inhibit or nab international fraudsters. There is increasing cooperation among national law enforcement agencies, Interpol assistance such as red notices are being utilized when appropriate, various international financial system actions are being taken to inhibit their ability to transfer funds, and occasionally for particularly bad or big fish, there are undercover investigations, grand jury indictments and extradition requests. There have even been a few Nigerians who were unpleasantly surprised by what they only belatedly learned was going on to put them out of business. It's an uphill battle and there are more crooks than can be rounded up anytime soon, but every little bit helps.
Private citizens diddling with scammers may be a fun game, but isn't going to do a lot to put these clowns out of business. To them, you're just a cost of doing business, and if you get annoying enough, they have some (fortunately, limited) ways of retaliating by sending nasty little packages you shouldn't open to your e-mail address and even to your post office box.
Providing relevant information to law enforcement may not do something in an individual case, but it can help in the long run.
someone in their Ministry of Justice. One of the websites devoted to making the scammers look like idiots had a list on the site years ago (probably still there, but I never saved the URL and don't remember how to find it) of of dozens of emails whose IP addresses traced back to computers in Nigerian government offices.
Nick
I'm not worried about these scammers. They possess even fewer brains than they do morals.
And they can't get me where I am, else they wouldn't have tried to lure me to Nigeria for a good, old-fashioned kidnap scam.
Besides, I think they'd be a little more interested in going after the guy who actually managed to convince the scammers to send him money. It was hysterical!
Would it violate any law to trade on these stocks after noticing that spam e-mails might encourage dumbasses to trade in them?
That is good stuff.