New scam, but not ready to bait yet

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Dec 2009 Posts: 3

Hi All,

This is my first post to the forums here, but I have been lurking a while and interested in baiting ever since a lady I know fell victim to a romance scam.

I just received a message from a valid email address of a lady whom I had worked with a few years ago. I'm sure her email account has been hacked, and I've left her a voice mail letting her know what has happened. I've been thinking about baiting a lot lately, but don't think I have the time available to devote to it. Maybe someone here would like to take it!

It is a typical "I'm stranded, please send money" scam. I've checked the headers, and the originating IP is from Africa. I can post the full details of the message here, but I wasn't sure exactly what to obfuscate to prevent the lad from finding it.

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 4:53 am

Your friend may have fallen for a phishing scam and the perps sent out the Help-Me-I'm-Stranded emails to everybody in the address book. Did your friend notice that her password stopped working? They usually change them.

You can post the message on the Surplus 419 Scam Letters forum and somebody can pick up on it.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Dec 2009 Posts: 3

I haven't heard back from her. I'm guessing that they have changed her password but in my voice mail, I recommended that she change it ASAP if possible.

Thanks for the tip... I'll post it in the surplus forum.

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 7:12 am

^^Lakeside

I particularly loathe this type of scam. It's a deeply personal violation of the victim whose email account has been compromised, and it's a violation of her whole social network as well. It abuses her relations with all her family members, friends, ex-friends, business associates, etc, often creating real personal and professional turmoil for a victim even if the scammer never sees a cent. All the scammers we bait are evil, but this particular type of scammer seems especially evil to me. Evil or Very Mad

That said, I would feel uncomfortable baiting such a scammer, since the real victim's personal details are already in the scammer's hands. If I'm successful in my bait, and I have cost the scammer a whole lot of time, resources, dignity, and pride, he has an innocent victim he can vent his rage on.

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 7:53 am

Take your time, well, take their time... scambaiting is a cat & mouse game to me... but I have a T-shirt to prove it works. Gotta love swag!

or maybe like a beagle and a chipmunk...

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 8:28 am

I wouldn't recommend posting this for others to bait. It's your friends account. She needs to change her password and let everyone in her contact list know her email account was compromised, she isn't stranded, and doesn't need any money. Also, posting her addy to be baited might land her on someone's insult list. A few weeks from now some baiter will write to her telling her she is just a small boy who will never make any money. That might be confusing for her.

More than likely her account was phished. This means she was tricked into providing her password to the lad.

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 8:43 am

Now if you had the original phishing email that your friend fell for (One supposedly from her ISP or mail provider, saying that for reasons of 'maintenance/security/...' she needs to give some personal information including password, or that sends her to a web site where she had to enter said information 'to verify it') then we could setup an account with a bunch of baiters as contacts in it, and give that one up to the phisher. Then it would be totally unrelated to any real person.

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 9:58 am

@ secdev

Your friend needs to get hold of the abuse department for her email provider and inform them as to what has happened. If she has a copy of the phishing mail, she should send them that also.

Hopefully, they will be able to retrieve her account for her. Then, my advice is that she opens a new account, transfers anything she needs to that and dumps the compromised account after wiping it clean. The reason for dumping it is that she has already proven herself a mark to the lads and they will probably continue to target her, even if she gets her password back.

Once the account is dumped, give it a couple of months and bait the lad with extreme prejudice.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Dec 2009 Posts: 3

Thanks for the info guys. Since the lad could link any baits back to her, and possibly cause her more trouble, I've decided not to post the details of the scam here. If she gives me any info on the how they might have gained access to her account (phishing link, etc), I'll see if I can target this guy further.

Normally all scams are picked up by my spam filters, but one did happen to slip through today (African AFF scam), he put a phone # in the message, as well as a yahoo reply address, so maybe I'll mess with the guy a bit Smile

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