Is 419 evolving?

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Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2011 9:50 pm

One thing I've noticed about the facebook lads, they love their blackberries. And they love to post shirtless pictures of themselves to facebook with the mobile BB app. Just like UK/American teenagers. Laughing

So I'd guess whatever region is wealthy enough to have Blackberries, is where the facebook scammers are. I doubt their scamming phone would be a blackberry huh? I also see them portraying a lavish lifestyle. Whether to make you jelly or just show off on FB, i don't know.

But aren't south africans more wealthy than northern africa? Because of britain being there back in the day?

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 12:42 am

sagat wrote:

One thing that hasn't changed over the years is greed.

If you are talking about greedy victims, you are incorrect. Most victims do not get trapped by greed. Desperation, YES. Ignorance, YES. Loneliness, YES. Over trusting naïveté, YES. Greedy scammers, YES.

Quote:

If the people who receive these emails just delete them or report them, we will see a rapid decline in these scams.

I have to disagree. Reporting them will not make them go away. Scammers just come up with a different email address and or user name and carry on. It happens all of the time.

Quote:

I know some people are not aware of these kind of scams which is why they need to be educated about it

Most people are not aware of scammers and how they work. Most people believe that the message they get are from someone they know or from something they did. They do not know how to check to see where the message came from or why they received it.

Education is the best.policy. Finding ways to keep people's interest or attention long enough to comprehend the issue and how it affects them is the challenge.

Then there is the issue of language and culture. I go back to desperation and people thinking that their problems are solved by the email they have received.

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:44 am

I think Education is the key word here, especially for the elderly.
I remember the first time I got a 419-email. I was a college student at the time. For the first five minutes reading it, I couldn't believe my luck.
"Can this be true, someone wanting to give me a vast amount of money just for opening a bank account" .. five minutes later my common sense clicked in and my natural skepticism made me realize that this was actually a scam. Nobody had told me about these before, although I had always been aware of snail-mail scams which we're more common back then.
If the e-mail had been more carefully worded and less obviously a scam, then I might have been tempted to test the waters and even send money.
I think that often with the elderly as they get older, the natural skepticism they have, does seem to recede and a child like view of the world returns.

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 6:02 am

Following on from 'Noid, and Wowow, Slightly, et al.

Scamwarners has not slowed down in the few years I have been there, as Slightly posted, as countries connect to the net, so the scams proliferate into the country. India, Malaysia are the current ones, with the Eastern European and Phillipines being hit with au-pair scams especially

As 'Noid and Wowow posted, education, and publicity is the only defence. You can not underestimate the stupidity of the average internet user, (paraphrased from TP Barnum I think)

Desperate times, desperate people, romance scammers are the bottom dwelling leeches of the internet, they know there will be a payout so long as they are patient, and don't push people, Military scammers are the next ones.

All any of us can do is bait, inform and get involved in one way or another

As the links below show

http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1712803&highlight=#1712803

http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=204319

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 8:52 am

ateabanah wrote:

So I'd guess whatever region is wealthy enough to have Blackberries, is where the facebook scammers are. I doubt their scamming phone would be a blackberry huh?

Heh. Absolutely nothing to do with wealth. Their Blackberries aren't normally bought and paid for legally. They steal them from vics. It's one of the most popular items for a lad to scam for. If the lad is any good at scamming, he'll have one - doesn't matter where he comes from.
They also use them for work. No traceable IPs and nice and mobile. The perfect weapon for a lad.
If anything, if the lads "evolve" that's the way that they'll be going - using that sort of technology which is harder to trace, more convincing to a vic and easier for the lad to use. It's still email but harder for those of us involved with vics to deal with.

Quote:

But aren't south africans more wealthy than northern africa?

There's a large wealth gap between rich and poor in ZA but it's more to do with cultural outlook than anything else.
In Nigeria, 419 is accepted as the norm. Corruption is endemic and permeates every aspect of life. 419 is therefore widespread and looked upon as more of a job than a criminal activity. Even those who oppose it give nothing more than a weary sigh and use the mantra that lads are only acting in the same way as their government. The argument is that the authorities don't set an example so what do you expect? And as they're generally perceived to hit the "imperialist West", it's not seen as a doorstep problem - rather they turn their attentions to robbing "rich" Westerners than stealing from their fellow countrymen. Of course, it's a moot argument, because a lad will steal from anyone. Nationality doesn't matter and to be honest, some Nigerians seem to be as ignorant as to what lads get up to as the average uninformed Westerner. They've basically swallowed those mantras and excuses and not bothered following up on what the lads really get up to.

South Africa may be getting there, but it doesn't have that moral outlook at the moment.
Incidentally, every single lad I've dealt with in ZA that I've managed to get any decent info on has turned out to be a Nigerian. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 9:34 am

^^ Thus spake Zarathustra

Slightly has encapsulated everything about scammers, the bastards are going to use whatever comes to hand to to further their income

And yes, I'll be whatever the word is for denigrating a racial genome

But Nigerians count in the top places in the World Olympics for Scamming

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:02 am

irishemigrant wrote:

But Nigerians count in the top places in the World Olympics for Scamming

You can apply for World Scam Olympic tickets at http://bankofafrica-ougadougu-do-not-leet.com

Money will be debited from your credit card until either:
a) You have none left.
b) You have sold your house to pay for the debt you got yourself into for being a fool.
c) You have killed yourself, and even then we will contact your relatives to see if they will send more.

You will not be aware that you have any tickets until
a) We drive you insane
b) Hell freezes over
c) Are you that stupid, ok send us more money and we might tell you

If you ahve any issues please call this premium number +0919828282883838387474 (charged at £100 per minute - calls will last no longer than 3 years)

Rolling Eyes

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:03 am

Quote:

But aren't south africans more wealthy than northern africa? Because of britain being there back in the day?

We only have more modern infrastructure because we had 'evil colonialists' for longer, and Nigeria had colonialists back in the day too.

We have plenty of 419 scam here, in my own experience most of it seems to congregate around cell phone sms though. But yes most of the drug trafficking, human trafficking, and money scams are spear headed by Euro or Nigerian gangs, well at-least the ones that get caught and reported.

Quote:

There's a large wealth gap between rich and poor in ZA but it's more to do with cultural outlook than anything else.

Yes and no, alot of what people perceive as wealth here, is a stereotypical caricature of a *edit*westerner*edit* (in fact much like it is in northern/west Africa). However only roughly 10% of our population is financially active, taking out children, that would still leave 10s of millions of people who do not earn a regular income and spend it.

Advance fee scamming seems to have such a hold in the northern/western african countries as it has been one of the most actively used methods of crime for some time. Down here, more direct robbery has and still is the most actively applied means. Home invasion/House robberies are on a steep incline.

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South Africa may be getting there, but it doesn't have that moral outlook at the moment.

Unfortunately this is more no than yes. Our politicians are increasingly and steadily being implicated in more and more financial fraud, as well as echoing messages that things need to be take from the 'evil colonialists'. With them wanting to pass an information bill that will effectively castrate the media from reporting on these things. The yes part is that there is still a medium size of the average joe population who want the basic needs of a human for free and to work for the rest within legal methods. But as the governmental construct becomes more and more corrupt I don't know how long that will last.

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:32 am

The only evolution, if you can call it that, is lads these days ask for up front money after only an email or two. They used to be prepared to work a vic for at least a week or so before getting to that point of the scam.

Other than that, it's the same old same old.

As for me, I now negotiate them up from 30% to 99% share for me of any monies left intestate. And admin fees down to where it's hardly worth them bothering to collect. That's progress of a sort. Very Happy

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:13 pm

It's ironic, but I just sent an article which was on NPR today, about a 76 year old man in Idaho in the US who was scammed out of, what i interpret as, his life savings. over $175K USD, as well as "hundreds of magazine subscriptions." He lost everything, and now is in "assisted housing."

This scammer would call back every other day and get $30k USD from the man (who had dementia and completely forgot.) by offering to sell his timeshares.

I wish i could contact them and try to bait some personal info out of his scammer.

:/

These are the exceptions I see people getting scammed with. As i listened to the podcast i was kind of sickened, but I relised I have been around and seen scam emails since I was about 13 years old, when I had my first email address back in 2002-2003, and I always knew they were scams.

But I guess not everyone has that intuition. Especially 70 year olds with dementia.

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 5:25 pm

^^^^^^
I wish I could do far more imaginative things to some one who would do something like that. It gets me really fucking angry thinking that whenever a scammer really takes some one for a ride that they probably are sitting somewhere laughing about it, really smug thinking that they're super smart.