Your first 419 Email

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Baiting Guru Joined: 17 Sep 2006 Posts: 5905

Does anyone remember their first 419 Email and what they made of it?

The first one I ever received was in my University Email inbox when I was about 19. These days I know nothing about the Internet which is twice as much as I knew back then, I was (almost) the kind of person 419 scammers love.

As far as I can remember it was a next of kin scam but at the time I had no idea what a 419 scam was so I wasn't really taking notes. I knew nothing of online scams and back then I was a trusting, idealistic and even it is fair to say quite a gullible young man. However luckily the idealistic part of my character made me think twice about responding, the whole proposal just sounded really dodgy and illegal to me despite the mails protestations to the contrary. I'm glad it wasn't a legal looking proposal like a lottery scam otherwise I would have probably fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

Despite the scammers requests to keep the whole thing confidential I told a friend of mine about the mail I received and I'm glad I did because saying it out loud confirmed to me how ridiculous the whole thing sounded. Someone who didn't know me wanted to give me a truckload of cash for doing next to nothing. My friend who was a little more technically savvy than me also confirmed it was a scam.

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:33 am

Back when I was 15....It was a Coca Cola Lottery scam which I dragged out to 2 months!

(It was a baiting account, and I just joined this forum)

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:43 am

Believe it or not, I've never ever recieved one in any of my genuine accounts. Only when I started baiting a few months back did I see my first one!

I must have been either very careful (unlikely) or just very lucky.

419Eater Admin Joined: 30 Sep 2003 Posts: 7469

I don't recall the first 419 scam email I ever received (I will definitely have a copy of it as I have every email I've sent sent/received backed up since 1999) however I do remember the first ever 419 related site/forum I ever posted on, and that was Quatloos on the 31st July 2003. It was the first time that the word 419eater was ever used Smile

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 10:52 am

I was on air in 1996 and reading the studio emails, when I noticed one from a guy in Nigeria offering millions.
I didn't get it, so I rang my Dad to ask him. (He'd been in computers for years )He said it was a load of crap and they asked for fees upfront etc. I asked him how he knew this and that's when I discovered Daddy had a secret life. He'd been straight baiting them for a while!
He doesn't bait any more, but I send him the odd one of mine that makes me laugh and he sends me ideas.
I guess this baiting thing runs in the genes Laughing

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 10:55 am

Mugatu wrote:

Believe it or not, I've never ever recieved one in any of my genuine accounts. Only when I started baiting a few months back did I see my first one!

Same with me. I had never received one until I actively encouraged it.

it wasn't me wrote:

that's when I discovered Daddy had a secret life. He'd been straight baiting them for a while!

What a heart warming story.... Very Happy

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:24 am

My first was the Ol' oil tycoon killed in a plane crash in Nigeria, I was selected to help his accountant get the money out of the country & away from corrupt government officials Rolling Eyes

Didn't know that much about baiting back then but gave him a merry run around anyway & lots of lad downtime in the cafe. Laughing

Didn't take it seriously for a second, no such thing as free lunch as they say Wink

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 12:39 pm

I received several snail mail, hand written 419s back in the 1980s (!!!) but my first email was about 10? years ago from a lad telling me about the famous trunkbox of cash that needed to be 'repatriated'. Being a voracious reader of magazines and newspapers I knew it was a scam and deleted it unfortunately. I had a few more over the years and then a couple of years ago I got one to which I replied "I know this is a scam and I hope you rot in jail". This provoked a stream of magnificent death threats in large, red, bold capital letters (none of which I kept unfortunately) and that's when I decided to do some investigating and found 418Eater. The rest, as they say, is history Laughing

419Eater Admin Joined: 30 Sep 2003 Posts: 7469

418eater was a failure. What can I say....

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 2:57 pm

First one I got was in 1998... still have it... about funds in the Federal Government Contract Review Board in the sum of $31M... I was offered 20% for my services...

Good times... Wink

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 3:22 pm

Late 90's some time. I never believed it and just deleted it. After that I would occasionally take the script and look it up to confirm my scamming suspicions. I was looking up one earlier this year and came across 419baiter which introduced me into scam baiting and followed his links to here.

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:26 pm

mine was about 10 yrs ago but i dont remember what it was about now

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:36 pm

I think some ISP's like Earthlink filter out these emails.

I started with Earthlink in 1999.

I have never received one on my Earthlink account and my regular email address is in a lot of places on the Internet.

All of the 419 emails I have received have been forwarded to me by others for baiting or have come in on free email accounts.

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:38 pm

I don't specifically remember mine, although I think it had something to do with over-invoicing a petroleum contract. I remember thinking it was really strange, as more time and care had been put into it than what I was used to from spam.

I wasn't fooled though. I've always been a big believer in the saying "if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is".

I think I'd received lottery scams before, though I just thought they were more spam trying to get you to click on a website so i never bothered looking at them.

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 10:16 pm

shiver metimbers wrote:

418eater was a failure. What can I say....

I know - I did my best to get that site going but some bastard beat me to it. He even slightly changed the name to 419Eater.

Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 6:28 am

I've not had one in a personal account until recently, I do remember the ones on the fax machine in the 80's, everyone just laughed at them.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 08 Aug 2007 Posts: 6

lol i only received them when i started signing loads of guestbooks that said mugu in them (not with my genuine email lol XD)

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 3:15 pm

I got my first 419 email from a guy I chatted with on Yahoo chat on July 25, 2003. I was 18 at the time, and I kinda believed what he was saying Embarassed

Quote:

Hello,

Thanks for your response, well I tell you that this consignment was deposited by the last military head of state of Nigeria General sain abach intend to use this money for campaign in some local governments in my area during his political carrier, but it was unfortunate that man proposed and God dispose. He was suddenly stroked by untimely death that have to depart him from his early plans .

Because of my reputation here in country I don�t have my way to claim this consignment out, beside this consignment was deposit with a foreigner�s name mr aref Morris.

So what I need from you is your assistant to help me claim this consignment out from the security company. I have all information of the depositor here that will enable stand as the next of king of this consignment.So all you need to do now, with a letter to the security company attorney tell him that you are miss Anna Nguyen , that your uncle Mr. aref Morris deposited a consignment there branch office address arnouts treasure lynex bv security company, ADDRESS 120 VECTORIA CITY CROSS RIVE STATE Nigeria, here are all the deposit information (DATE OF DEPOSIT JANUARY 10 1995)(NAME OF DEPOSITOR,( aref Morris ) (SECOURITY CODE NO,03039817PFTF contain (family treasure )please do knot give disclose this information to him except he ask for it. note do not give the attorney the impaction that what is in the trunk box is money, and don not let my mane to be mention. Here is the security company attorney contact

name Benjamin madukanya
phone number 234 80 23965591
email [email protected]
beast regard
usman saina

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

1998.

Some lad sent a standard 419 email to a Hotmail address I had at the time.

I screwed with him about his claim of being a barrister and asked him lots of other questions that amused me, but then went I went TDY for several months and forgot all about him and 419 emails until I got a snail mail at work in 2005.

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:50 pm

I never had them until I started here

Still, in my personal accounts I do not receive them. I did get a snail mail version a couple of days ago. A friend at work sort of knows I do this 'baiting thing'. Her dad received a phone call in the beginning of the week, but the guy on the other end spoke English and her father doesn't speak any English whatsoever. So the scammers wrote him a letter (yes, an actual letter over mail). He asked his daughter what it said. She started laughing and said: 'no dad, this is not for you. This is for Persephone'. So now I am the proud owner of an actual 419 snail mail letter

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 8:43 pm

I never paid any attention to the emails until a couple of years ago when I started to get bookings from several businessmen coming to "my country". The first one I recived was bringing 17 businessmen for 3 weeks. The place I was running at the time didn't accomadate businessmen and was not in a location that would require a visit from 17 businnessmen.

I started asking for a credit card to secure the reservation then reporting the card stolen and asking for another one. Eventually the booking date passed and he was still trying to make a reservation, so I kept taking his credit cards...

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:08 am

Mine was through a romance website - american stuck in Nigeria desparately needing help. Nothing much in my email because I have always used a junk filter.