Labelling photos

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Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:22 am

I want everyone to take this post seriously. I have not been on site long but believe me I belong here. I have noticed from quite a long history of being single that some pictures of ladies come up again and again when associated with scams. So I will emphasise this:- Please do not label photos of these as being a photo of the scammer. Shiver reports about the highly offensive hospital photos that came. I would say that you ought to label all your pictures, indelibly water mark them before publishing. But do not write on them � this is a scammer�. I'll bet you evens money it is a stolen picture. If you use a picture then always label it, but instead say �Photo used by a scammer!� Just remember that the person who is in front of that lens is probably unaware of what the picture will be used for and may well be utterly mortified by it. So avoid creating more victims when you see and publish photos.
really long link is an image used on me over a year ago by a Nigerian scammer in touch via Socialgrid. I placed the report and piccie on Stop-scammers website. Something in the texture of the picture seems to reveal that it is a scanned picture out of a magazine, but this photo may equally come from the website profile of a model. One thing for sure is that this lady is not a scammer, only another victim.

Edited to fix the blowout- TS, Mod

Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 4:23 am

Thank you for sharing how you feel.

Pictures that scammers use on dating sites are not offensive, hence no need to label them.

Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 12:08 pm

I prefer to label them for a couple of reasons.

I do think when a victim views the picture of 'his Olga', and sees 'suspected', 'scammer', or 'this picture used in romance scams' displayed across it, it has more impact on the victim.
I do more victim work, than baiter work, now. It's damn hard to convince some of them that 'Olga44D' is really not writing him, and doesn't really love him, is not going to move to Broken Bow, Nebraska, and work on his hog farm with him!!

I do understand the different sources of the pictures. Most are stolen.
A few are of cohorts or ladies paid to pose by the scammers.
These should be labeled differently. The ones you can actually identify as of a scammer, or a lady paid to pose for the pics should be labeled 'scammer', and appropriately so.

Labeling the stolen pics 'This picture used by scammers', or 'this picture used by scammers' seems appropriate.

I don't want an innocent person accused of being in on the scams, but I feel a need for the picture to be marked. The innocent person whose pictures has been stolen is a victim, also.

I also try to give several of the series of pictures an appropriate file name before uploading them to my various photobucket sites. Maybe if some victim does an image search for 'olga44d' he will find my picture with 'this picture is used by romance scammers' scrawled across it.

More in depth marking would be cool, if we have the information!
Marking the picture 'this is a picture used by scammers but is actually that of Olga44d, a porn star with a website at www.olga44d.com' would be wonderful, and educational!

Since it's so hard to identify some of the Russians as being part of the scam, marking the pictures as being used in scams is the right thing to do.
I try to remind myself that.

I'm still hoping some innocent russian lady will let us know where some of the sites these pictures are being stolen from. I've heard a lot are stolen from Russian blog or photobucket sites. There may be one dominant source it would be lovely to find

Mark the pics, but try to do it appropriately.

Who knows? Since scammers browse this site, and any anti-scam site, do we want to become a source of new picture sets for them?
I prefer to put some text across the part of the face for this reason.
(Usually the forehead) Hard to crop around it, hard to edit out.

Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 10:32 pm

You are right Stepan.

Assumed scammer, or pic used by scammer, sounds good to me

Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 12:16 am

That's exactly what I meant. The criminals who use these pictures are guilty of fraud, theft, identity fraud, often threats of violence and in some cases murder. For those girls, who find out they are being used in this way, it must be very traumatic. They are just as much a victim or more so, than the fool who hands over their dosh, although my heart goes out to some of the victims. I take great pride in being here and taking part to my best ability, and using my considerable talents, to make a small contribution to defeating this evil criminal circus. Part of this involves protecting the innocent and I suspect we are all here for the best and same motives.

Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 8:19 pm

Quote:

For those girls, who find out they are being used in this way, it must be very traumatic.

I've actually talked with one of the girls that some scammers had used her picture. Unfortunatly, she was unconcerned that her pictures were stolen, but wasn't very happy of what they were used for. She was not traumatised in the least.

This person has a non-nude, soft core web site with over 20,000 pictures available.

Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 9:36 pm

Finding out that one's pictures are being used by a scammer can be a shock. But what about the people in the pics that are being used by baiters? I've read quite some baits that involve pics sent by the baiter and while I have no idea where other baiters take their pics from, I think this aspect deserves some thoughts as well.

I think using pictures of a celebrity in a bait (or even a scam) is not that much of a problem. These people are already very exposed to the public and their pictures are already being used by many people for various purposes.

So when you need pictures for a bait, if possible, take semi-famous people (not too famous, obviously), but not pics from a John Doe taken from a private website. Another reason for this is that -- just as with IDs -- the scammer might reuse the pictures for other scams and in this case it's better he uses Julia Roberts' pics than your neighbour's pics. (With the additional possibility of any potential victim recognizing the celebrity.)

However, I'm also aware of the difficulty of finding celebrity pictures that don't look like it's a celebrity (i.e. with make-up, champagne in hand and expensive clothes on), because that's probably not the character you're playing.

Posted: Sun Nov 26, 2006 10:15 am

I've actually wondered about this in the past, reading some baiters' work. I use celebrities for my baits, but I have no idea where baiters find the progressively dirtier pictures they often use for these love scams.

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:17 am

Began Steele wrote:

I want everyone to take this post seriously.

Sorry. You lost me after this line.

However, if you wish to dictate forum policy, you can start your own and post until the cows come home.

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:20 am

(Somebody's drawn enema duty this week and is cranky.....)

Smile

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 8:32 pm

Quote:

Just remember that the person who is in front of that lens is probably unaware of what the picture will be used for and may well be utterly mortified by it. So avoid creating more victims when you see and publish photos.

VLAD:

Quote:

In this business the set of people works, some of them write "patterns" (the ready letters in advance written to "workers") on which correspondence is conducted. Basically they are written by girls with higher education, they receive for it the certain sum, on the average 100 $ for each letter written by them. But they have no direct dialogue with victims. There are as girls, some of them professional photomodels which specially for this business do a photo, in fact photos it is the most part of success, whether without good photos of beautiful girls Hardly has turned out. They as receive money for each photo the sum it is established It is finished speaking, but basically as changes the order 50-100 $ for each photo. " Workers " only are engaged in that that register on paid, or free-of-charge sites of acquaintances. Paid sites of acquaintances are paid through VISA or through MASTERCARD, but you do not think, that scammers spend the money for it, no! They buy working numbers and other information at so-called carders. Cost of the information of one card Visa at carders makes 1-2 $. Some cards are usually bought at once. After registration on sites of acquaintances, structures of lonely men are searched. And "workers" write personal messages to many thousand at once, victims answer them them e-mail, correspondence begins with this moment on so-called "patterns". Certainly for everyone men the approach is necessary, "workers" provide it. Basically scammers the formed people with the greater volume of imagination, and as some of them with knowledge of English language. Scammers do not visit the Internet of cafe, we rent the apartment, which is equipped or - with the satellite Internet, or we are connected to the Internet through the modem.

HM, not so sure about the whole 'had no idea why the picture was taken' part.....

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:50 pm

Yup! I've noticed some patterns with some of the larger groups of scammers.

You can identify separate sets of photos taken in the same setting or time. One vlad group usually has ten pics per group.

One new set I'm getting now has lovely exif data showing the lady is changing clothes every few minutes and posing in various locations of the apartment.
The gal is posing in modelish or provocative poses, but the pics are essentially snapshots.

Stolen pics? Maybe sometimes. When I amass a large collection of the girl, I kind of doubt it.
The vlads claim the pics are stolen, anyway.
The price the vlad claims to pay per pic seems high.
If the average vlad set has ten pics, that's serious money.

I have many vlads with over 20 pics.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 3:19 am

jaysus i`ve a load of one girl posted Confused

they all definitely look just as Stepan says, but do i need to mark them? cos i never bothered, unlike passports or the first trophy i got, my Lad must have got his little sister to pose. , what a scumbag Evil or Very Mad

http://s126.photobucket.com/albums/p86/SamSpudz/

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:07 pm

^The VLAD above was talking about organised scams. So, in one office there would be about 20 to 30 employed scammers. The pictures would be paid for, but used by all the employees.

Quote:

The price the vlad claims to pay per pic seems high.
If the average vlad set has ten pics, that's serious money.

So, therefore, the price is not as high as it seems. If they pay 50 dollars per picture and they take 20 pics = 50 x 20 = 1,000 dollars for 20 + scammers to make a lot of money off. Plus, he was talking about professional models. I doubt all VLADS are this organised. This one VLAD made about 2,000 dollars per month minimum. But as you can see, his English is quite good and he was not employed in one of those offices. He mainly bought his way to independence. When I talked to him, he had been scamming independently for over 5 years, so he was quite a success unfortunately.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:17 pm

I personally don't mark the pictures but mark any documents. It's hardly difficult finding sets of pictures of girls to use. Five minutes in Google and I could have a set ready to use. Plus there's the fact places like focusagencyhawaii don't bother watermarking their pictures despite being aware scammers see them as an easy source of pictures.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 5:19 pm

Yeah, but pics you post can show up in image searches. My goal is to provide as much info on the net of these scammers as possible.
It's lovely to do google text or image searches of your 'lady' and see your info pop up, and the pictures with 'scammer' or 'this picture used in scams' scrawled across the face!!

Yeah, the scammers can find pictures, anywhere. I don't want to be even a possible source.

(although I have posted scads of unmarked Oksana Belousova pics hoping she will show up stranded in a Lagos hotel......)

Wink

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 8:08 pm

Nurse Nasty wrote:

. . . . . if you wish to dictate forum policy, you can start your own and post until the cows come home.

I wouldn' t even dream of ! Inadvertent collateral damage comes to mind. Just want to contribute to the good. Convince a few scammers that they follow a useless profession and hope they lose a few nights sleep

Not quite a Newb Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 41

And on that happy note, I think this thread is done. Very Happy

If you all wish to debate this further, please take it to PM's.