Dear Nigerian scammer
Yes, it is true. I’ve been scammed. Sort of.
The other day I listed for online sale some computer equipment I had laying around, and this was bound to attract scammers. I don’t know why, but it happens, and it turns out almost always these guys are from Nigeria. It could be that laws there are not very strict with these matters, or that it is a traditional way to make ends meet in a tough situation. But it’s no wonder most eBay auctions specifically forbid Nigerian bids.
As I was saying, I received several fishy offers. Note that I’m posting the scammer’s private information on purpose :)
For example:
[...] Received: from [196.3.183.73] by web59915.mail.ac4.yahoo.com via HTTP; [...] From: kerry jones <kerr_jone@yahoo.com> [...] Hello, am kerry by name am now in united kindom for a purpose.....am sending this item to a friend in lagos nigeria....i will like to let you know that am paying you through pay pal....i will want you to send me the total cost include the shipping cost to lagos-nigeria..you can also call me on this phone number now +447024017578..please get back to me asap.
It’s astonishing how many guys fall for it. I guess the phone is a VoIP UK number, but hey, guess what?
This friendly guy that is “now in united kindom for a purpose” is writing from Lagos, Nigeria! GeoIP sure is a nice thing. Which by the way is supported in Cherokee, in case you’re wondering how to use that on a web server. Pretty handy.
Normally I don’t even take the time to answer these guys. Sometimes I even send them a fast response with a local reference, and they stop bothering:
Oh, really? And how is it there by Leeki Lagoon today? The forecast seems cloudy.
Here is another guy with the same story:
Received: from [41.219.235.64] by web59706.mail.ac4.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:37:09 PDT From: Michal Benyak <michal.benyak@yahoo.com> I am in the Uk now and you are shipping to the manager of my store far away west africa (Nigeria),so get back to me with your paypal id asap so that the payment can be made.
He even got annoyed when I told him I wasn’t shipping to Nigeria. LOL!
Why? but am going to pay for the shipping.Get back to me with your paypal id asap so that the payment can be made immediately
ASAP, is that clear? ;-)
As I said, I tend to pay little attention to these guys, but the other day I stumbled uppon one so persistent that I couldn’t resist. I was so amused that I thought it would be fun to mess with the guy. I’ve been having a nice laugh lately thanks to his mails. You can check the whole list of emails sent back and forth (with most headers) on my next post, just in case you want to investigate. I’m only deleting my info, not his. In short, I got to mess with him for weeks with false tracking numbers, and refused to deal with the crew of his fake bank because they had offended me. Then I got to laugh a little more by “being paid the whole insurance” by the courier company for not delivering the item. And now I think I’m going to make up a false assistant to mess yet a little more. I’ll have to think about it.
Stay tuned for my story with “Dowing Morris” <dowingm80@gmail>, the scammer wannabe that was supposedly writing from Canada. Read Canada as in Kachia (Nigeria), of course.
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Can you believe it? One of them has tried to scam me again right now for a different article. Oh my! This is my reply:
—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<
Hello Michal.
You should really take notes. Don’t you remember me?
I thought we made it clear last time that you were a Nigerian scammer trying to rip me off and that I didn’t appreciate it.
Please stop wasting both our times.
PS: Are you still in the UK now and trying to get people to ship things to the manager of your store “far away west africa”? :-P
PS2: Have a nice day. Really :-)
—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<—-8<
This is funny.
The laws here are actually quite strict. The problem won’t go away for a few reasons, some of which (in my possibly naive opinion) are:
1. The success rate and pay-off is too darn high.I have no statistics on this, but the huge amount of ridiculously priced hi-tech devices available for purchase in some parts of this country is testament to this. Can you believe you can buy a mac-book pro for as low as ?80,000? At the current exchange rate in the parallel market, that is a little over US $460. How so? The item was most probably not bought in a legitimate manner.
2. Law enforcement has little incentive to combat this (how many people are filing lawsuits?), and also probably lacks the requisite tech-capabilities to track and bring scammers to book
You spelt “Leeki” wrongly :). It’s spelt “Lekki”. Which suggests that you’re better off ignoring these things rather than trying to sound like you can’t be fooled. In an ideal world, you would forward such an email to relevant law enforcement authorities and sleep peacefully…
Err, well, I wonder how a paying client would perpertrate a scam on e-bay so much that e-bay would place a ban on bids from Nigeria, but I am glad that companies like Amazon still ship to Nigeria instead of hiding under the mask that Nigerian’s are likely to be scammers when everyone knows what the real problems are: Credit cards are too darn insecure (I have one, and I hate the fact that credit card transactions aren’t protected with PINs) and people who fall for rather elementary scams (most of such scams are actually quite easy to identify) need a few lessons in commonsense.
Anyway, to contribute to the pool of positive information about Nigerians abroad, I would like to assure you that there are a good number of Nigerians out there who know what proxies are and who have access to remote, off-shore hosts through which to tunnel their IP traffic… so, don’t place so much faith in those GeoIP tricks. I guess what I’m trying to say is, Nigerians are not all a bunch of crooks and dimwits.
Count me as one honest Nigerian plying the tubes and who is often embarassed when Nigeria is cast in such a negative light.
[deep breath]. Feels good to let that out of my chest.
Now, I have used cherokee, and find it to be quite good. I dig the admin interface ;)
P.S. My IP address may suggest that I am in Lagos, but I actually am not. Thanks to the scarcity of IPv4 addresses, and the fact that Nigeria is a third world country, most of our internet traffic is NATed, and most of our internet access comes from public internet cafes, where you quite simply can’t conclusively judge who did what.
Hey nucco. Thanks for the insight! :)
I must confess my knowledge about Nigeria is close to non-existent, and sincerely hope you don’t see my post as offensive towards Nigerian people. I’m sure everybody there is as hard working as anywhere else. Probably more, seeing things are much tougher in many aspects. When I wrote the post I just wanted to share the laughs, so please bare with me.
As you said, these scams are rather elementary. Also here in Spain. It puzzles me that they are so effective.
Just some notes:
1. Blame Google Maps for me misspelling Lekki. Thanks for the correction ;)
2. I’m glad you like Cherokee. What else could I say, right? :)
3. I’m enjoying your blog. Hopefully I’ll learn something about Nigeria thanks to you.
That was a superb article,You gain knowledge of interesting things each day.
hi. i was just wondering on how the scamming work? dont they send you the money on paypal? if you get the money, why is it scamming?
@Patrick: the payment usually never arrives, and if it does, Paypal has a strange behavior regarding payments. First, the owner of the account can’t access the funds whenever he wants, and in case of dispute it almost always leans towards the payer. Which is great if they want to attract buyers to use their service, but is not as good for sellers. Specially in this kind of scenarios.
ok thank you. so if i get the money on paypal from the buyer, i cant take them out right away? i have been contacted by a man with the same name above, michal benyak. who wants to buy my truck, and he will be paying with paypal because he is onaa boat working and he will arrange the shipping and transfer him self. i guess its the same guy.. hmmm
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Привет!
Многократно серфю по интернету и нравиться сколько могу присоединиться к вам)
Не подскажете можно ли заработать для форекс7 Что посоветуете?
А то обедать некоторые сайты для которых довольно конечно рассказано чистый сидеть на бирже. Некоторые я даже сохранил в закладки. тож же в подписе у профиля)
Который что подскажет?
Interesting, why did you reply him at first?
Бесплатный сыр, только в мышеловке!
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