What country are your lads from?

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Posted: Sun May 24, 2009 7:33 pm

Besides the sheer enjoyment of baiting, and the satisfaction of hindering crooks from committing fraud, I also find the phenomenon of 419 scamming interesting. I was just wondering if we could use this thread to list all of the countries that people have received 419 scams from.

So far in the two months I've been doing this I've had emails from:

Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cote D'Ivoire and Malaysia. What about everyone else?

Just a couple clarifications. I don't mean where your lad claims he is from, as in the NOK scam where someone is from Sudan or Zimbabwe and is a refugee in Senegal. I mean where they are emailing from.

Also, I specifically interested in 419 advance fee fraud and not love scams.

Posted: Sun May 24, 2009 8:02 pm

Our lads have come from Nigeria, Senegal and Burkina Faso.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

Much the same but also South Africa, Netherlands, UK, USA, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong...

Posted: Sun May 24, 2009 8:24 pm

Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, UK, Spain, South Africa, Kenya, Benin, Russia, Ukraine...
Count out the final two since they are vlads and not 419ers.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

Basically how many countries have internet access?
You'll eventually get scams from most, if not all

Master Baiter Joined: 20 Oct 2006 Posts: 179

Favorite lad ever was South African.

I've gotten quite a few ladmails from Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. Seems that's a growing center of 419 activity. India also seems to be producing more 419ers.

Basically, scamming will thrive anywhere with good Internet access and corrupt/ineffective law enforcement. Certainly scammers can run operations out of places with good law enforcement like the Netherlands, the UK, etc. but they run a much larger risk of being arrested and must take more measures to conceal their activities.

Basically, the economic principle of comparative advantage applies: there's nothing inherently different about West Africa or West Africans that makes the area better for scamming - West Africa simply has a comparative advantage in 419 scamming due to language + cheap internet + low risk of arrest.

Posted: Sun May 24, 2009 10:45 pm

Quote:

Much the same but also South Africa, Netherlands, UK, USA, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong...

Nanny Ogg, are you saying that there are Japanese, American and Canadian 419 lads, or are you just saying you've had emails supposed to be from there??

I'm sure no country is immune from fraud, but I'm interested in where this phenomenon is concentrated. I've yet to have a real 419 email that wasn't from West Africa other than one from Malaysia. I'll be shocked if Americans and Japanese people are doing this.

Posted: Sun May 24, 2009 10:46 pm

I had lads in many parts of Africa, Europe and some in Malaysia, though majority of mine turn out to be Igbo lads. Go figure Laughing

Posted: Sun May 24, 2009 11:27 pm

Argonaut wrote:

I'll be shocked if Americans and Japanese people are doing this.

Then prepared to be shocked, Argo. There are American lads committing AFF/419 scams. Also Canada is big for it; particularly the Toronto area with check lads.

Take some time to read some old threads. I remember, in particular, jojobean actually met (well kinda) a lad(ette) in Atlanta and has pics posted somewhere on Eater.

I am sure there are many more examples. I just remember jojo's. Very Happy

Posted: Sun May 24, 2009 11:30 pm

This is the smiley to represent being shocked.

Master Baiter Joined: 20 Oct 2006 Posts: 179

Along that vein, I remember someone posting a bunch of pics of their lad on a boat in Amsterdam where they had arranged to meet. Forgot who it was. For some reason, it seems like the Netherlands is a big European 419 center, anyone know why this is?

(The baiter was not on the boat, he took pictures from elsewhere. IIRC the baiter was experienced in surveillance and the like. Kids, don't try this at home!)

Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 2:09 pm

Felix the Cat wrote:

For some reason, it seems like the Netherlands is a big European 419 center, anyone know why this is?

Bullocks. Sure, if you search hard enough you could maybe find two or three stray Nigerians misbehaving a bit .. Wink

Seriously: I have never seen figures about the density of 419 activities in Europe. I do know we have them, but no idea if we've got more of them than Germany or the UK, or France for instance.

Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 4:55 pm

Ok, let me refine my question a bit more.

It seems very interesting to me that there are a cluster of countries that the majority of 419 scams originate in. Why those countries? For example, there are scams I've seen from Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. Those countries all border each other (except Senegal). Is the 419 phenomenon spreading like a virus, extending geographically? Or is it that certain cultures produce a lot of lads and others don't.

Has anyone seen and 419 scams originating in Cameroon? Chad? Niger? Mali? Liberia? Guinea? Guinea Bissau? Liberia? Gambia?

I know some lad modalities involve these countries, and sometimes lads are sent on safari to them, but from what I've seen these countries do not contribute significantly to the 419 phenomenon. Why would 419 activity spread to Burkina Faso, but not Mali??

Any ideas?

Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 5:20 pm

Yes to Guinea-Bissau, two of them (one offering a job at a London hotel; the other died pretty quickly, but there was a charity mentioned in every mail, so was probably aiming at a direct donation, or the charity worker was about to get stranded somewhere). The other places mentioned: nil.

But I have got an ongoing one with IP Libreville, Gabon. That surprised me: too much influence of Gabon = Earth's Last Eden, I guess.

Interesting question though: why here but not here?

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

Most of mine are Ghana or Cote d'Ivore, but I've had one love lad from France. (Verified by IP address.)

Master Baiter Joined: 22 May 2009 Posts: 112

Argonaut wrote:

Ok, let me refine my question a bit more.

It seems very interesting to me that there are a cluster of countries that the majority of 419 scams originate in. Why those countries? For example, there are scams I've seen from Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. Those countries all border each other (except Senegal). Is the 419 phenomenon spreading like a virus, extending geographically? Or is it that certain cultures produce a lot of lads and others don't.

Has anyone seen and 419 scams originating in Cameroon? Chad? Niger? Mali? Liberia? Guinea? Guinea Bissau? Liberia? Gambia?

I know some lad modalities involve these countries, and sometimes lads are sent on safari to them, but from what I've seen these countries do not contribute significantly to the 419 phenomenon. Why would 419 activity spread to Burkina Faso, but not Mali??

Any ideas?

Liberia is in that list two times.
But uhm, I've had a Liberian lad. He lived somewhere else though.

Master Baiter Joined: 20 Oct 2006 Posts: 179

Argonaut wrote:

Ok, let me refine my question a bit more.

It seems very interesting to me that there are a cluster of countries that the majority of 419 scams originate in. Why those countries? For example, there are scams I've seen from Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. Those countries all border each other (except Senegal). Is the 419 phenomenon spreading like a virus, extending geographically? Or is it that certain cultures produce a lot of lads and others don't.

Has anyone seen and 419 scams originating in Cameroon? Chad? Niger? Mali? Liberia? Guinea? Guinea Bissau? Liberia? Gambia?

I know some lad modalities involve these countries, and sometimes lads are sent on safari to them, but from what I've seen these countries do not contribute significantly to the 419 phenomenon. Why would 419 activity spread to Burkina Faso, but not Mali??

Any ideas?

Some people say that the culture is particularly supportive of scamming, but I'm not sure that's as big a factor as some people think.

I think it's a combination of:
-Good and inexpensive Internet coverage - this involves the area having some level of communications infrastructure, which rules out countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Guinea etc. that have an underdeveloped infrastructure. Large cities generally have better infrastructure, so countries without large, internationally-connected cities like The Gambia are out.
-Language - it seems that most scams are conducted in English, for good reason, as English is the global lingua franca. Scammers must be proficient in English to conduct their scams, which means that they tend to come from areas where English is an official language - Nigeria - or at least somewhat widely spoken - the neighboring countries. Countries where other languages are dominant - for example, Chad, where French and Arabic are the primary languages - won't be as prominent in the scamming world.

A side note to this: it's entirely possible that there are masses of 419s going on in other languages that aren't very well-represented in the English-speaking Internet. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if there are 419 scam letters going out in Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic - three languages which generally don't have much cross-over into English (as opposed to, say, French - many Francophones also speak English). I'd imagine that those 419s originate from areas that are not Nigeria. For all we know, there's a Chinese scambaiting community too, and we don't know about it because there's a huge divide between the "English Internet" and the "Chinese Internet".*

-Local authorities - scamming is much easier to carry out when the local authorities turn a blind eye, whether through bribery or simply not caring (both seem to be the case in Nigeria). In countries where the local authorities pay more attention to crime and less to bribes, scamming won't be as popular.

-Lack of opportunities - scamming is probably more popular in areas where there is a lack of opportunities for legitimate upward mobility - places with high unemployment and many barriers to entry into high-paying jobs. This is particularly important, since in countries where English is not the first language, scammers must by definition have some level of higher education in order to speak English well enough to scam.

*To illustrate the Chinese-English divide - I'm an active member of the community for Spring, an open-source game engine. About a year ago, we discovered that there was a parallel Chinese community that nobody from the English community knew about - this Chinese community had their own host/game lobby servers, their own modification of the engine source code to support Chinese characters, their own games built for the engine - and they'd been around for years without any contact with the "main" English-speaking community!

Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 11:38 pm

Wow, Guinea Bissau and Gabon! Oooh, that would be cool to bait people from there.

Felix, you raise some interesting points. I'm sure there must be parallel scams being run in different languages. I also think your point about internet coverage is a very good one - you can't conduct a spam/scam campaign without decent infrastructure.

I disagree with your point about lack of opportunity, though. What I find interesting is that the 419 scams seem to be centred on the most prosperous parts of West Africa. Ghana has a very high standard of living for Africa. Nigeria, Burkina, Cote D'Ivoire, and Togo all have their problems, but they are miles ahead economically compared to Niger, Chad or Liberia. Also, the Ibo people, who seem to dispraportionately contribute to these scams, are well known for their industry and business skills. They are know as (and I realise this could offend several ethnic groups in one go but it does explain the point) the "Jews of Africa." Across Nigeria, in the north and west where they are a minority, Ibo families often run shops and are on average wealthier than their non-Ibo compatriots. This phenomenon has led to a lot of anti-Ibo feelings across Nigeria, and was in part responsible for the Biafran civil war in the late 60's.

Well, that's what I think, anyway.

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

According to IP my lads are from:

US
Canada
UK
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Spain
Belgium
Tunisia
Nigeria
South Africa
India
China
Hong Kong
Australia
New Zealand
Ireland (they dont seem to last long in ireland!)
Romania
Hungry
Turkey
Sweden

They could be absolutely anywhere, thats only based on where the ip says there from.

Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 2:02 pm

Argonaut wrote:

... They are know as (and I realise this could offend several ethnic groups in one go but it does explain the point) the "Jews of Africa."

1) They are known as the "Jews of Africa" by whom, exactly?

2) How does this "explain the point?"

Edit:

Had a number 3: but removed it.

Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 4:06 pm

Felix the Cat wrote:

Lots of stuff, please don't quote whole posts - RC

yeah, I know there are chinese scammers, I've had a few and even gotten a trophy out of one of them.

Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 4:53 pm

Quote:

1) They are known as the "Jews of Africa" by whom, exactly?

2) How does this "explain the point?"

I have had one professor, who was West African, use that term. I had another professor (not African) say something similar. I can't say what the provinence of the expression is.

As far as explaining the point goes, the Ibo, like Jews, Han Chinese, Armenians, and some other groups have established prosperous minority communities in a foreign culture. This is no mean feat. (Like these other minorities, the Ibo have suffered resentment and discrimination outside thier southeast heartland. In fact, this resentment was a contributing cause of the Biafran Civil War in 1967-70.) So, Felix the Cat's point that people turn to 419 scams out of desperation doesn't make sense when you consider that many of the scammers come from some of the most prosperous groups.

Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 5:31 pm

I understand your point Argo; however, do keep in mind that in the end, scams (or any other actions) are taken by individuals, not groups, thus were we to take the "achiever" model of West African Ibo culture as a "given," we've no indication those members of that community involved in the scamming culture are prosperous. Similarly within many historic Jewish communities, the mores of orthodox culture has helped many individual Jews succeed in regions where their people were considered outsiders. Although they succeed in many professional arenas, that did not preclude (for example) the development of a socially Jewish underground of criminal activity in some parts of the US in the 20th century.

Individuals act for individual reasons. I expect that the 419-ers of the world are scum because of what they choose to do as individuals. Circumstances (whether cultural, economic, or stability-related) might facilitate particular demographics leaning toward bad behavior, but in the end the lad who sends off a NOK scam to some destitute widow and does his best to bilk her out of the meager savings she reserved for her own funeral is a scumbag on his on (de)merit.. He chooses evil. Still, he is (I pray) the exception. Given the identical culture and environment there are hundreds of thousands of honest, hard-working men and women for every scammer.

Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 9:10 pm

Lehigh Guy - I agree with what you are saying. It is a danger when you examine looking at 419 scams as a cultural phenomenon that you can make it look like there is something normal or excusable for these crimes when viewed from a different cultural perspective. That is not the case, and I know that from my own experience that most Africans are just normal law-abiding people like everyone else. These scumbags are a tiny minority.

Still, the question remains, though, why do so many of these scumbags come from some countries and not other adjacent countries? I think that as long as you don't lose sight of the fact that the crimes are committed by individuals who are responsible for their actions, it is a legitimate question.

And yes, every ethnic group produces criminals. There are always some rotten apples. Just because the Ibo are relatively prosperous as a group does not mean they won't produce criminals. Isn't it interesting, though, that a large proportion of 419 scamers come from an ethnic group based in southest Nigeria, while a very similar ethnic group over the border in northern Cameroon has produced hardly any?

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 29 May 2009 Posts: 14

In reality, 99% of the lads are nigerians, even if they operate from other countries, and almost all of them are Igbo.

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