Which scam do you think is most successful?

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Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 12:34 am

I was just thinking tonight about what makes a lad pick a certain scam story to use, and was wondering what you guys think the most "successful" story they send out is?

The hitman scam seems so ridiculous, but then again fear is a powerful tool and if they can convince somebody that they are really about to be whacked, this could potentially work good.

Other stories such as the deceased relative/inheritance scam seem so ridiculous that I can't picture them ever working.

Any guesses? Or things to add to the discussion?

419Eater is my life Joined: 04 Jul 2009 Posts: 277

I've often wondered about this sort of thing. Not only which kinds of scams fool people the most, but also what the demographics are for victims of advance-fee fraud. Who is the most likely to be scammed? Poor people? Middle class? Wealthy? Young? Old? The less educated? I have no idea. I think that sort of information could be very useful in educating the public on these scams so they don't fall for them.

Personally, I would expect the most successful scams to be the less outlandish ones with less far-fetched stories. I would also expect them to be more successful when they wait a long time before asking for money, and they ask for small sums of money for a while before they increase the amount. But I don't really know.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:12 am

Lotto ones perhaps. I also agree that maybe outlandish story scams might succeed less these days. I probably can't speak as the victims, but I have trouble just reading through all that bullshit in the first place. I"m hoping that would be the case with a potential victim. I have posted some pretty long winded scams, it is a pain for me to go through and classify it, but I think I would rather have them blow as much as hot air as possible, that way the potential victim will just get easily bored/annoyed/distracted, and just delete the message.

Also I don't see how the refugee/my father, or whoever/whatever owns a cocoa planet, etc, and I am in a different country in a refugee camp, and I need your help with the funds, etc. That also to me seems rather outlandish.

I'm going also guess, that if not lotto, perhaps charity based scams are probably one of the most successful. It is specifically designed to tug at the heartstrings of those who be inclined to donate to any latest disaster.

I myself don't have any data to back any of this up, this is all speculation at hand. If anyone , perhaps even a more seasoned bullshit-detector here can offer better or concrete results that would be great. Also remember victims are less inclined to report that they have been scammed, at least a vast majority so there is also margin of error to consider.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:14 am

I'm sure it varies, but it's just gotta be the less educated that fall victim. I am not trying to say that as an insult to victims, but just what genre I picture being more susceptible. Also, I'm guessing the lower-middle class is probably victims most often. Just my opinions.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:16 am

Is it possible that age range would be a factor as well? I also don't mean to generalise here, however I would not be surprised that the more aged peoples would be perhaps easier to swindle.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:18 am

Then again... Happy Slacker makes a good point. The charity scams are the most believable, and probably more successful than others. Charity scam victims are likely not the uneducated lower-middle class. I would expect that to be the older generation of middle class people, education level varying.

419Eater is my life Joined: 22 Jan 2010 Posts: 329

Charity scams sound like the most believable, especially after big disasters. Perhaps phishing scams and others that pretend to be from legitimate banks as well- I know of cases where victims have got themselves scammed because the email pretended to be from their bank.

In general, though, I'd say that the response rate for all these sorts of scams is so low that there's little point distinguishing between them. The scammers who get the most victims would probably be the ones who can get the most emails out and attract more victims by sheer weight of numbers.

There's no demographic or socioeconomic group that's totally immune to these lads, but I would suspect the the elderly are more likely to fall victim to this sort of thing, especially if they're first-time computer users. I grew up with computers and the internet, but the same can't be said for the rest of my family.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 5:32 am

Most of the scams I see in the news are on older people. Maybe they are more willing to tell their story than younger people?
Lots of people seem to fall for romance scams, especially if they've just been divorced or had a mate die and are lonely.(or horny)

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

You might find this interesting. It's the 2009 annual report from IC3, the FBI's internet crimes complaint center.

http://www.ic3.gov/media/annualreport/2009_IC3Report.pdf
Linked from here: http://www.ic3.gov/media/annualreports.aspx

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 6:15 am

love that avatar curlyearl

Thumbs up

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

Locally we have had a lot of publicity recently about emails from friends and/or relatives traveling in another country. The emails claim a person has been arrested and bail money is needed to be wired. It is amazing how many people believe this email, because it seems to come from their friend or loved one. From what I read it doesn't seem to matter what the age or gender of the victim is.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:42 am

^^ Everyone should read the IC3 Report. posted by Ima
the REAL short story. complaints from ages 10 to 100.
losses by age group(adds to 100%) slightly rounded.
0 to 20--4%
20-29---20%
30-39---20%
40-49---22%
50-59---22%
60-100--12%
elderly maybe under-reported ??

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:50 am

Brainiac wrote:

60-100--12%
elderly maybe under-reported ??

Or an age group with a smaller percentage of Internet users.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:54 am

Soooo if you are in your 20's,30's,40's,50's look out. and 60+ yrs old.
kids and teenagers dont worry too much
Males to Females were $1.50 to $1.00

My opinion is Wall Street bankers and stock-brokers such as the recently
jailed Bernie Madoff raked in the biggest hauls in the BILLIONS
and his victims were not naive...But IC3 is for INTERNET crime.
And Internet crime is the topic here. I wanted to make a point that intelligence or stupidity have nothing to do with getting scammed.

Trust ? Read the IC3 report and I think that 1 word might explain the losses in ALL categories.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:59 am

It depends how you define "successful". A scam that fools one person in ten million (or whatever), but gets a huge amount of money from him? Or a Craigslist type scam that mimics a normal commercial transaction, and gets much smaller amounts from a very large number of victims.
In terms of yield, I'd say the second is more successful.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:06 am

^^Good point Mr Tambourine Man. I'm 56. I was 10 in 1963 and we didn't have computers in the classroom. I went back to the Junior College at age 49 in 2002 took 1 semester of intro. to the PC. and followed by a semester of typing class. the 60+ grew up in the 1940's, 1930's and earlier they are now, probably less Internet and/or computer users at all.
My Aunt Jane is 80. Runs a business. No computer. Fax & phone only.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:09 am

^^TambourineMan I agree with you. Craigslist and eBay type are more "successful". and 419 Advance Fee by sheer volume

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:43 am

Ima Baeder wrote:

You might find this interesting. It's the 2009 annual report from IC3, the FBI's internet crimes complaint center.

http://www.ic3.gov/media/annualreport/2009_IC3Report.pdf
Linked from here: http://www.ic3.gov/media/annualreports.aspx

yes, I´m pimping your post.
I´ve bookmarked it and found this snippet interesting:

Quote:

Male complainants lost more money than female complainants (ratio of $1.51 lost per male to every $1.00 lost per • female). Individuals 40-49 years of age reported, on average, higher amounts of loss than other age groups.

Not what I would have expected.
Thanks again, Ima Baeder!

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:56 am

@ Brainiac - we need to be very careful about interpreting stats on internet fraud because there is such a high no-reporting cohort and because really successful scams may never ever be reported. Finally, IMHO these numbers are wildly under-estimating the true size of the problem because most never include the substantial number of secondary victims (friends, family, businesses etc). And most of these are average people with jobs, homes and kids. It's the gift that keeps killing.

However the trend data is quite useful and suggests several things. Lads are becoming more active on the internet (absolutely). Victims are growing in absolute numbers (definitely) and or are more likely to report the fraud (possibly). Fraud awareness campaigns are becoming better and more effective? Nope, I doubt this. It is a low priority for governments and law enforcement resourcing / policy world wide.

Unlike random muggings or other violent crimes, scamming victims self select their scam of choice for the most part. For example, I have little doubt that some of those bloody Haiti scams were very successful. Most of these victims are probably motivated by altruistic concern for this tragedy. Some people are very lonely and so on ... we all have a vulnerable spot for lads to exploit.

While I deeply enjoy baiting, I know my sole efforts don't make a great deal of difference in the scheme of things. But that might not be the best way to look at what we do. I prattle on about this place to my friends and family (too much) and hopefully all of them have become better educated and better protected as a result. We (baiters in general) get into the news from time to time and this really raises awareness. Scammers we bait are not dealing with real victims so we reduce their harm and make them less effective at what they do.

So I play the game ... it's really well worth it.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 10:21 am

Brainiac wrote:

^^Good point Mr Tambourine Man. I'm 56.

I'd like to see a breakdown of the 60+ figures. The Internet has been around long enough that many in their early 60s have been using it for a long time.
I'm 63, and have been on-line for 15 years (bulletin boards and email) and Internet for almost that long. To say nothing of having a computer in the early 1980s.

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 12:52 pm

Hopefully we are not educating lads here Laughing

I guess 419 is the most successful scams, the smell of easy money will lure many people to jump in

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 1:10 pm

i think that the definition of 'most successful scam' will change over time.

this is a bit like an arms race - when a successful scam emerges, the warnings to the public follow soon after.
so we get patterns like a disaster, followed by appeals, followed by fake appeals, followed by warning about scams.

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