Victims lose $450K, $200K, $26K UPDATE: Another $100K gone

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Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 3:11 am

Some of you may have seen the recent TV show where a formerly successful Australian businessman gave Nigerian scammers money over a period of 16 years and, naturally, bankrupted himself. (If not, here's a transcript)

I pick up my paper this morning to find that a local here has handed over $450,000, making 170 payments and continuing even after being warned by the police. Another one has emerged, after admitting to paying $200,000 and a third was content with just $26,000. ($450,000 Australian dollars is US$375,000 and 200,000 'ponds starling')

Welcome to Queensland, Australia, the dumbest place on the planet when it comes to Internet scams. For those of you who don't know about it, this is a vast place (three times as big as Texas, folks) populated by five million chuckleheads who wander around all day saying 'ay' before going into Western Union to do their bit to support the economy of Lagos.

I despair, I truly do. The state police has an active cyber-crimes unit, and even has a project called Operation Echo Track, which tracks funds being sent to Nigeria and warns potential victims. But no, the fine folk here are sending $500,000 per month, doctors fighting with engineers and lawyers to give away their money.

We talk about educating the public, but what can you do when people simply won't listen? Sad

EDIT: The state slogan is 'The Smart State' Rolling Eyes

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 3:15 am

Just imagine how much money would be spent if 'we' weren't here wasting some of the lads time.
I know it seems like a hopeless fight, but we are making a difference!

Master Baiter Joined: 13 May 2007 Posts: 137

I told my wife that I wanted to start doing this in the time I used to spend on MMO and her response was "how are you going to make a difference". I quoted Edmund Burke. "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

It makes me feel good to know that maybe instead of scamming the lady down the hall, my lad is talking to me.

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 4:35 am

Main reason why this fight will continue. As long as we keep a % of mugu's busy we are making sure that some innocent victim will not fall prey to these scums of the earth.

So morals and ethics play no role in humiliating these crimials.
Just my humble opinion

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 4:50 am

Quote:

EDIT: The state slogan is 'The Smart State'

I noted in the recent 60 minutes story a claim that on average $0.5 Million is extracted from Queenslanders by 419 scammers each month. Queensland is an enigma. We in other states love to take the piss, but financially it's always been one of the better managed states. They've also got many of the best parts of Australia there, from a tourism perspective [Ahhh Queensland.....Monday one day, Tuesday the next..... Laughing

] I can't explain why they appear to be scammed more easily than the rest of Australia, but they seem to be the first Aus state to have established their own 419 hit squad, so I reckon, in typical Queensland style, in 5 years time they will have reversed the current trend.

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

I saw a news story last week about a guy who was going to jail because he had a position with a small city government and embezzled money from the city to send to scammers, after his own money/loans had run out. SAD.
Did anyone see the MSNBC to catch a conman show? They used a baiter to help them, his name was "Bill". I kept wondering if it was someone from here. . .

Why don't people print out some of the scam emails and make warning posters with them to put up in the WU offices so that when someone goes in to wire money, they'll see them, and be educated?

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 5:05 am

It's disheartning to read about how many people still fall for the scams, considering how much press this subject has been given.

How big the problem is really struck home for me when I opened up a catcher account and started receiving loads of scam mail in short order.

There is no shortage of scammers and there is no shortage of victims. There are just not enough baiters to go around.

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 5:22 am

It makes me sick to my stomach.

I read the story thinking it was me, my family, everything I worked for and it just made me so f... mad.

A few years back I read the story of a woman in Canada. Apparently she was in need for money for his husband's medical treatment. She was desperate and fell for one of this idiots' scams. You can imagine the outcome....

Bastards....

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 5:58 am

@ Wright B - Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that Qld is the Florida of Oz where a lot of cashed-up people retire to spend their supers in the sun? They get a computer to while away the hours of leisure, have no clue about the internets tubes and are sitting ducks for lads.

Anyway, Victoria has its own share of victims. A local high-profile accountant got sucked into a scam and 'borrowed' money ($400K if I recall) from his client account to fund it. It all ended in tears of course. But if so-called 'professionals' who presumably have a reasonable level of smarts clearly have no clue then what hope do the average Aussie battlers have?

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 6:08 am

I live in NSW in Australia and have to say, yes Queensland people are a bit slower but thats just because they dont have a great education system

The state is quite large with the population spread around it the densest being the Gold Coast which is a holiday Resort area full of all those worlds, water, Warner Bros, etc.

No wonder they fall for the scams I look at them in sorrow not in mockery.. Sad

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 8:01 am

@Gnasher - I think you're right. Partly it's the retiree thing, partly it's the, er, rather undemanding nature of our state economy, mostly rural or tourism-based, and a general feeling of torpidity and somnolence.

Also, as Reaper says, our education system isn't the best, though whether that's cause or effect, I'm not sure.

For example, I once made the mistake of sitting in a pub in Cairns, flicking through a book while waiting for a friend. A local came past me and said, "Reading books, ay?" as though I had achieved something remarkable. Literacy here (in FNQ at any rate) means being able to read a gas meter.

We desperately need more publicity and education about this, and though QLD isn't alone in that, we're not a group which watches much serious investigative TV, I think. We need some rugby league team to stick 'Stop 419' on their guernseys to get any interest round 'ere. Wink

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

Mind blowing amounts Evil or Very Mad

, bloody lad scum, there is some further reading on Queensland scams, here:

http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=109360

Elite Baiter Joined: 17 Sep 2004 Posts: 1269

That's just sick. Crying or Very sad

A while ago, there was a thread asking if you pity your lads...this is why I *never* pity them. Evil or Very Mad

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 7:40 pm

I guess I'll be from Queensland in my next bait.

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 7:49 pm

luckey wrote:

I guess I'll be from Queensland in my next bait.

I was thinking the same thing. Can you imagine?

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 8:02 pm

I can't begin to describe how angry I am at a) scammers getting money. To a lesser extent b) people not being informed enough of this scandal. I don't know what pains more, but I do know what I can try deal with.

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 10:15 pm

I don't know why people can fall for these things. It seems like common sense to me. Especially people with that amount of money to invest like that.

I'm just angry that these mugus are so stupid and still manage to pull this off. They just copy and paste and get money from innocent people.

There should be a few very sad stories in a single thread somewhere, so it's easy to link to when anyone has doubts about baiting. If anything, baiters are too nice.

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 10:28 pm

@ Range - If we knew why people fall for these scams then we wouldn't be here. There are all kinds of factors - gullibility, ignorance, greed, loneliness, trust. Victims who get burned once and learn a hard lesson from it are actually the 'lucky' ones. There are plenty who keep getting sucked in over and over again, usually in the hope of recovering their previous losses (it's a bit like a gambling habit) only they don't understand that the 'jackpot' was never there in the first place.

Master Baiter Joined: 20 Aug 2005 Posts: 187

The problem is that people have problems understanding the concept of sunk cost; it isn't intutively obvious. This article talks about political mistakes, but then generalizes it to mistakes we make in all areas of our lives where we have already sunk resources:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=E7327616-E7F2-99DF-38F214BFD77FE010&pageNumber=1&catID=2

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 11:20 pm

Then let's not dabble and keep wasting their time! I have a lot of practical things in mind to make my future lads do, just to be extra cruel now.

Posted: Wed May 16, 2007 10:21 am

Yep, stories like this make me feel like my baiting efforts are just a drop in the buckets. Crying or Very sad

Still, I've fifteen lads on the books right now and the gloves are coming off. Twisted Evil

Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 12:21 am

Another brain donor has admitted losing $100,000 in a classic wash-wash scam for which he travelled to Amsterdam, and made a total of 30 payments. Rolling Eyes

"I am a Christian and they talked about going to church," he said. "I felt like a Christian wouldn't rip me off."

The newspaper is also full of praise for a local man who got a Spanish lottery e-mail promising $600,000, but "fortunately, he smelled a rat."

Actually, perhaps all this publicity is a good thing. Victims here are now quite openly talking about being conned, which must be the best kind of education you can offer to other potential victims.

Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 8:42 am

Ima Baeder wrote:

Did anyone see the MSNBC to catch a conman show? They used a baiter to help them, his name was "Bill". I kept wondering if it was someone from here. . .

I doubt it. They all but wore shirts that said "STUPID BAITER IN TOWN".
They had some seriously excellent electronics to track the package and they wasted their chances at catching someone the moment their plane landed! If anyone here helped them, I doubt they would show their face. Give Me their budget and I would deliver them a mugu a day!

Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 11:17 am

I'll fess up to being south of QLD, now as for them being any different to the rest of the country. QLD has been Australia's own haven of scams, most people here know if it's a letter from QLD then put it in the bin. The laws there about lotteries etc are or weren't the same as NSW and VIC but anyone
over the age of 35 should remember all of the land scams in the 70's.
Investors spent millions on blocks of nice flat land for future development. Then found out later it flooded twice a day every day. The glossy pictures didn't show that.

I still bet if you did a proper study then it would be much the same all around the country. It's just that QLD has taken a step to measure it and try to stop it.

And as for corruption this country was founded on it Smile

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 07 Sep 2006 Posts: 15

I used to ask myself (and occasionally still do) ask myself, "how can someone be so ignorant to fall for this crap?"; but then I have to step back and remember that some people haven't been exposed to the world like we have.

Let's take older people. My parents, for instance, are both near 70. They barely know how to work a computer. My mother keeps screwing it up. She thinks the "internet" is a vast space with information floating around. They are not stupid people. They are both educated, but they are from a generation of people that do have a big retirement and too much trust in other people.

They're like a big, juicy ripe tomato for a mugu, and that pisses me off because that's my unmotivated, lazy birthright!

That's why I'm planning on locking them both in the attic as soon as possible so I can live off their hard earned money and swim in their pool .

'Cause if anyone is going to take advantage of them it should be their own kids! Twisted Evil

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