FBI and scammers

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 20 Jan 2007 Posts: 11

I just read about this forum in a newspaper and it looks like alot of fun!
A friend and I did some of this scambaiting a few years ago and had some good laughs.
One of the things my friend liked doing once he got an interested scammer was to tell him that his attorney finally agreed it was a safe deal but there were a few more final questions. He'd then tell him to fax all the necessary paper work one more time to a number which was actually an FBI office number.
On one occasion he actually gave him a contact number to a CIA office and the guy called! He then wrote back with something like, "Dear Sir, it appears you are a CIA agent, how can I know I can trust you from now?"
Shocked

Another time we worked together on one scammer as rich-man and financial advisor. We then decided it was best to just hand deliver the 16,000 dollars as Western Union kept screwing up the transfer Wink

We also talked the guy into accepting 30,000 rather than 16,000 which we thought was not enough. So my friend Dieter sets off for Africa but with a stop-over in Kruger national park for a Safari where he succumbs to an attack by wild hyenas and is hospitalized. We try and get the scammer to come rescue him as the hospital staff are drugging him and taking all his money. The guy actually calls the hospital but says they told him there is nobody named Dieter there. We tell him they are trying to cover up and PLEASE go and HELP. Finally he says he sent someone there but couldn't find Dieter. I as the financial advisor tell the scammer we can join up to rip off Dieter and we drag the game out a bit longer until Dieter contacts him for help in finding me and all his money I ripped off.

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 4:57 am

Welcome. I sounds as though you already have a good background in how to keep the lads busy.

I'm sure you will get hundreds of posts about baiting safe and extolling the party line so I wouldn't go into it.

One thing we discourage is sending lads to law enforcement who can not do anything about the scam and will just waste the LEO's time. They have other things to do. And if this starts happening too often, the LE organization will start to come down on us for bothering them.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 20 Jan 2007 Posts: 11

Thanks for the advice Dr. I thought it was going a bit too far but my friend seemed to think the FBI would appreciate the info.
I'm sure we'll learn alot here Laughing

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 8:16 am

^^^ Luther, it seems you have quite an imagination!

Welcome, pull up a seat and kiss your free time goodbye.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 20 Jan 2007 Posts: 11

709, yeah a friend and I used to have alot of fun but now that I'm married with a kid there isn't much time for it anymore.
Last few scam mails I replied to just got kicked back with an invalid address.
I was looking forward to one in particular of some poor Nigerian orphan sisters who were born to a Chinese mother who died in a car accident and then their African father was murdered. They were to recieve some large funds once they came of age etc...
I wrote back telling them that I was also an orphan and my mother had also been a Chinese working in Vietnam when my father (African American)G.I. was there and killed in combat....so I knew exactly what they were going through. I even offered to help them contact long lost family in China where I go many times a year for business!
I emailed them with a suitable picture of myself and everything.

Anyway, it just got kicked back with an invalid address Crying or Very sad

.

So is there any point in even replying to scams with either Yahoo or hotmail addresses? It seems they get marked as spam very quickly.

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:42 am

A fairly large proportion of scam emails are sent via hotmail or yahoo accounts. It's possible the email service provider they use has been blacklisted by your email provider.

Another reason for emails bouncing is that some people think it's a good thing to report the offending email to abuse@emailserviceprovider. We don't do that here as it takes all of about 2 minutes for a scammer to obtain another email address. We only kill phone lad email addresses.

In any event, there are three email services often used here: hushmail, fastmail and gmail. If you end up having problems with your email bouncing (reported as spam), you could change to another service with the same or similar baiting name. They'll probably not notice. Another neato thing about these services is if they are used to send email via the web interface, your IP address is not revealed.

Have you visited the Mentor Thread yet? Certainly worth a look.

hth

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 20 Jan 2007 Posts: 11

Thanks for the tips 709. I'll hang out a while and try to learn more from these different threads before deciding to get into anything.
Obviousely I need to do something different as my Yahoo accounts seldom get any scams these days.

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:16 pm

^^^^ the "surplus letters" thread has a never ending source of scam mails. I have pulled a few from there on "slow" days.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 20 Jan 2007 Posts: 11

Thanks Harry. Yeah I'm slowly finding my way around in here and realize this is a real pro operation going on here Laughing

Although a friend and I pulled some funny stunts in the past I have alot to learn before trying again. Just watched that webcam movie from London on another thread and I'm totally amazed Shocked

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 4:15 am

I had a lad today send me a pic from a FBI id. Not a very good fake either.