What does Lad mean?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 2

New to the forums and I see a lot of people using it...

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:30 am

Welcome to the forums! "Lad" is just our term for a scammer from Africa. Another common term is "vlad", often used for scammers in Eastern Europe/Russia.

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:38 pm

i think it's taken from the phrase 'lads from lagos', lagos being the focus of 419 scammer activity in nigeria.
seemingly, most 419 scammers are based in nigeria, or they are nigerians living abroad.

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 12:17 am

Scam o Rama first used the phrase if I remember correctly.

http://www.scamorama.com/scam.shtml

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 13

r2d2, I do believe you are correct about lads being taken from the phrase you mentioned. However, you really cannot generalize that most 419 scammers are based in Nigeria, or that they are Nigerians living abroad.

These type of scammers can be found anywhere in the world and they are many different nationaliites.

Wannabe Baiter Joined: 24 Nov 2008 Posts: 80

redshoes18 wrote:

r2d2, I do believe you are correct about lads being taken from the phrase you mentioned. However, you really cannot generalize that most 419 scammers are based in Nigeria, or that they are Nigerians living abroad.

These type of scammers can be found anywhere in the world and they are many different nationaliites.

Wrong. They are, and it's a fact. Nobody said "All Nigerians are scammers." Most 419 scammers are actually not only in Nigeria, but Festac Town [I believe.], in Lagos.

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 9:36 am

Sadly, the statistics seem to show r2d2 is right. I urge you to ignore my results though and to collect your own, please feel free to publish them here.

From my research, upwards of 85% of the 419/Advance Fee/Romance scams originate in Western Africa, and around 80+% of those, from Nigeria.

Nobody is claiming that most Nigerians are scammers, any country with 168M population will have a lot of rogue elements, it just seems that proportionally we see more than from (say) India, and surprisingly often when Malay or Spanish or Dutch scammers are traced they are also of West African origin.

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 3:38 pm

I always thought it came from "Jack the lad".
Defined as:
"(British slang) An irresponsible young man, seeking personal pleasure without regard to responsibilities. A rogue"

Though that might be a bit of an over-polite way to refer to a bunch of sneaky life-wrecking leeches...

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 4:59 pm

We had a poll many, many years ago, and it was decided that 'Pet' was the most apt and least offensive term when referring to lads. They failed to live up to that exulted term though. 'Lads' just seems to fit somehow. Confused