Did A Freeper Scam A Nigerian Scammer? (Second Thoughts)

The champagne corks were not popping at 400 N. Broad St., but there were some smiles. Circulation rose a paltry 800 to 387,692, which was an improvement over past years when the left-wing, liberal publication appeared to be in free-fall.

In 1999, the Inquirer was losing readers faster than any newspaper of comparable size in the country. An Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), the largest independent verifier of newspapers' circulation figures, showed that the Inquirer's daily circulation had dipped to just under 402,000 -- a 7.2 percent decrease from the same six-month period the previous year.

Liberals reportedly have dumped millions of dollars into something called Air America. This is supposed to be a left-wing radio network designed to steal away listeners from Rush Limbaugh and other conservative broadcasters. Well, trust me when I tell you the air has been let out of that trial balloon. Air America has replaced five top executives, lost crucial producers and has been taken off the air in two of its top three markets.

-- Offer a morning prayer. Oh, what the heck, one in the afternoon and evening too.

-- Every once in a while, mention that Saddam Hussein is an evil man who should get the death penalty.

The Star Democrat of Easton, Md., reports that a fifth-grader at Maryland's Grasonville Elementary School did a class project on the topic, "What would you take on a camping trip and why?" It consisted of a shoebox containing various tools, including a steak knife. School officials declared the utensil a "weapon" and suspended the unnamed 11-year-old felon for 10 days.

There's an e-mail going around that asks people to help rescue a Nigerian military official who took a secret flight to the Russian space station, only to end up stranded.

If you send $3,000 to help get him back to Earth, the message says, you can share in the $15 million in "flight pay and interest" he gets.

The New York State Consumer Protection Board thinks it has identified it as an obvious hoax and have named it the most outrageous example of advance-fee e-mails, which are also known as the Nigerian, or 419, scam. The messages often claim to be from a representative of a former government or royal official from Africa, and say that for a few thousands dollars, millions will be put into your bank account.

Of course, you have to send the scammers your account numbers and other information first.

Most of our readers are probably familiar with the scams in which a corrupt government official or attractive young woman is willing to share ill-gotten money with a nice American if he would simply provide access to his bank account.

A resident of the World Wide Web named "lowbridge" has found a way to turn these scammers into entertainment.

He leads them on and on and on and puts the correspondence on his website. What he did to a resident of the Ivory Coast named Gloria Gium can be found at http:// www.megaone.com/lowbridge/baitinggloria.html and what he is doing to Rita Kone can be found at http://www. megaone.com/lowbridge/baitingritakone.html

Poor Gloria wound up sending him a picture of herself wearing a pair of underpants on her head and holding a sign saying "Freepersrule" and "IMADUER"-- which refer to the conservative website Free Republic and the leftist website Democratic Underground, respectively.

From today's NYT:

BITING BACK - Karl J. Dailey, a Nebraska sheriff, says he helped shut a fake Web site used in e-mail swindles.

Scamorama is a site for those who pursue such thieves, inspiring volunteers like a California winery technician, above, who asked that his name not be published. A recent e-mail come-on, below, is typical.

Turning the Tables on E-Mail Swindlers By SETH SCHIESEL

Published: June 17, 2004

ON the face of it, everyone on the Internet should be rich by now.

After all, you've almost surely received e-mail from at least one intriguing stranger in a far-off land offering fabulous riches if only you will help recover some lost fortune. It might be $25 million spirited away during the fall of an obscure African regime. Or $400 million in oil lucre seized by one of Saddam Hussein's sons. All you, dear friend, need provide is a helping hand (ideally your bank account) and a few small fees, and perhaps a quarter of the money will be yours.

Of course, there is no fortune to be had. The only money changing hands will be yours, given to one of the thousands of so-called advance fee fraud artists haunting the Internet. Hailing largely from Nigeria and other West African countries, the "419" con artists - so known for a section of the Nigerian legal code - have bilked the naïve and the greedy out of hundreds of millions of dollars, according to law enforcement estimates. Some victims have traveled overseas to meet their supposed business partners, only to be robbed or kidnapped.

As a page at the Web site of the Nigerian Embassy in Washington warns, "Don't be fooled! Many have lost money!! If it sounds too good to be true, it is not true!!!"

Now, however, an ad hoc militia of self-styled counterscammers on several continents is taking the fight directly to the thieves. Aiming to outwit the swindlers, they invent elaborate and often outrageous identities (Venus de Milo, Lord Vader) under which they engage the con men, trying to humiliate them and, more important, waste the grifters' time and resources.

They then chronicle the exploits, documented by elaborate e-mail exchanges, at sites like Scamorama (www.scamorama.com). They also gather financial and technical information about the fraud artists, who are sometimes part of broader criminal networks, and refer their findings to law enforcement officials. Some of the antifraud efforts even appear to straddle the bounds of legality: disabling fake bank Web sites used to dupe the unwitting, or breaking into swindlers' e-mail accounts to warn victims already on the hook.

Part vigilante patrol, part neighborhood watch, part comedy troupe, the counterscammers are trying to beat the thieves of the Internet at their own game. And they certainly appear to enjoy doing it.

"There are all these people in America getting robbed blind, and what I'm doing is trying to stop it," one of them, a 48-year-old computer technician in Melbourne, Australia, who conducts some of his exploits under the pseudonym Stuart de Baker Hawke, said in a telephone interview. "I think of myself as an Internet-security type person." The Australian - speaking, like several others involved in fraud baiting, on the condition that his real name not be published - said that a personal specialty was figuring out passwords for Web-based e-mail accounts used by con artists.

But most of those involved seem content with spinning fabulous yarns that turn the tables on the perpetrators - in rare cases, even to the point of getting swindlers to send them money.

In one escapade recounted at Scamorama, a fraud baiter posing as one Pierpont Emanuel Weaver, a wealthy businessman, appeared to persuade a con man in Ghana in 2002 to send almost $100 worth of gold to Indiana - for "testing purposes as my chemist requires" - after being asked to put up $1.8 million for a share in a gold fortune. In other cases, swindlers are tricked into posing for pictures holding self-mocking signs, pictures then posted online. Or they are led to travel hundreds of miles to pick up a payment, only to come up empty-handed.

A 47-year-old manufacturing executive in Lincoln, Neb., said he had been engaged in such pranks for almost three years. "I've had many, many good laughs at their expense, and have spent nothing but time," he said. "They have spent countless hours creating fake documents, obtaining photos of themselves holding funny signs, running to the Western Union miles away from where they live to obtain money which I never actually sent, and printing out counterfeit checks to send me." As for his motivation, he said, "Hopefully, along the way, I've diverted enough of their time and resources to keep them from successfully scamming at least one hapless (albeit, most likely, greedy) victim."

And while not every success story can be substantiated, some law enforcement officials say the fraud baiters had proved to be crucial allies.

"I personally feel that we wouldn't have had the same effect with our initiative if we hadn't combined forces with the international scam-baiting community," Rian Visser, an inspector and electronic-fraud investigator for the South African Police Service, said in a telephone interview. "I can't see any law enforcement agency not making use of them. They are on the front lines, and they have information that is very valuable."

In March, Mr. Visser established www.419legal.org as a clearinghouse for information about advance-fee fraud and as a launching pad for attacking fraud artists. (Mr. Visser said his government's approval process for creating an official site would have taken months.)

Since March, he said, the fraud baiters have provided information that has led to seven arrests in South Africa and the seizure of property used by West African expatriates to conduct fraud. Last month, he said, they provided information that led to the closing of a fake South African embassy in Amsterdam that fraud artists had established to lend credence to their operations. One Saudi victim had lost $100,000 to that group, Mr. Visser said. He added that when the fraud baiters provide reliable information about fraud in unrelated countries, he relays the tips through Interpol.

Mr. Visser estimated that such schemes reap more than $100 million a year worldwide. Fraud baiters say that most victims lose around $3,000, but some far more.

Arrest and prosecution are difficult because of the international nature of the operations. But in January, the Dutch national police arrested 52 suspected con men in Amsterdam, most of them West African. Internet fraud baiters claim to have provided information that helped lead to those arrests.

And with the geography-erasing power of the Internet, it is not just major national police forces who are working with the fraud baiters. For instance, Karl J. Dailey, the sheriff of Dawes County, Neb., has also joined the effort.

"It went from snail mail to faxes to e-mails," Sheriff Dailey said in a telephone interview from his office in Chadron, Neb., referring to the initial pitches sent by con artists to people in his county. After local residents started asking him about the schemes, he said, he got involved with the fraud baiters at Artists Against 419 (www.aa419.org) and even helped take down a fake bank Web site. Now, he uses his local radio show to help warn people about advance-fee fraud.

Sheriff Dailey pointed out that the legality of activities like cracking into e-mail accounts and shutting down Web sites, even patently fraudulent ones, might be dubious at best. But he echoed Mr. Visser in lauding the baiters. "It's one of these areas that's gray," Sheriff Dailey said, "but I think it's serving a very useful purpose because the more miserable we can make these knuckleheads, the better. I'm all for it. More power to them and I'll do anything I can to help them, within the law."

A few of the fraud baiters appear to be motivated by racism (most of the con artists appear to be black Africans, operating either in Africa or in Europe). But most are not.

"It's not the Nigerian people we're talking about," said the Australian operating as Stuart de Baker Hawke. "We don't care where the scammers are from or what color they are. We care about their activities."

Fraud baiters and law enforcement officials in several countries said that 419 con artists were often associated with broader, often violent criminal groups. For that reason, they all encourage extreme caution when baiting. For instance, never use your real name, they say. Some officials discourage the practice altogether.

"We advise people absolutely not to respond; just ignore them,'' said a spokeswoman for the National Criminal Intelligence Service in Britain. "The way to deal with these scams is not to chase them.''

But chase some do. Looking ahead, some fraud baiters said they might succeed in substantially eradicating such schemes, at least on the Internet. One of those involved in fighting the con artists, a 48-year-old winery technician in central California, pointed to work on software tools called auto-baiters, meant to flood fraud artists with what appear to be real leads. "Hopefully someone will take it over and do it on an industrial scale," he said. "We want the scammers to spend so much time on fake responses that they can't figure out which ones are real."

But others fear that in the battle to protect naïve Internet users from themselves, human nature may not work in their favor.

"What was it that P. T. Barnum said about a sucker every minute?" the Australian baiter said. "People have been getting scammed forever. Greed endures."

Next!

Dear Friend.

As you read this, I don't want you to feel sorry for me, because, I believe everyone will die someday.

My name is idris Raman, a merchant in Dubai, in the U.A.E. I have been diagnosed with Esophageal cancer which was discovered very late, due to my laxity in carrying for my health. It has defiled all forms of medicine, and right now I have only about a few months to live, according to medical experts.

I have not particularly lived my life so well, as I never really cared for anyone not even myself but my business. Though I am very rich, I was never generous, I was always hostile to people and only focus on my business as that was the only thing I cared for. But now I regret all this as I now know that there is more to life than just wanting to have or make all the money in the world.

I believe when God gives me a second chance to come to this world I would live my life a different way from how I have lived it. Now that God ! has called me, I have willed and given most of my properties and assets to my immediate and extended family members and as well as a few close friends.

I want God to be merciful to me and accept my soul and so, I have decided to give alms to charity organizations, as I want this to be one of the last good deeds I do on earth. So far, I have distributed money to some charity organizations in the U.A.E, Algeria and Malaysia.

Now that my health has deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this my self any more. I once asked members of my family to close one of my accounts and distribute the money which I have there to charity organization in Bulgaria and Pakistan, they refused and kept the money to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not to be contended with what I have left for them.

The last of my money which no one knows of is the huge cash deposit of twenty four million dollars that I have with a security company in Europe.I will want you to help me collect this deposit and dispatched it to charity organizations. email me at idris4u2005@yahoo.com

I have set aside 10% for you for your time and patience.

God be with you.
idris Raman.

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