The lack of effort by western governments makes me wonder if politicians are
extending professional courtesy to these scammers.
Kirk
A Web Cadre Turns the Tables on African Scam Artists
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/technology/02spam.html?ref=business
By THOMAS CRAMPTON
Published: July 2, 2007
PARIS, July 1 Ever been tempted to respond to that e-mail message
offering untold millions from the relatives of a deposed African dictator?
Skip to next paragraph
A scam-baiter known as Mike Berry has published a book of his favorite
tactics with, yes, a somewhat misleading title.
For some, replying to such Internet scams is a rewarding hobby. They
call themselves scam-baiters, and they have started taking justice into
their own hands.
Scam-baiters scam the scammer. They antagonize, humiliate and frustrate
scammers who think they have an unwary victim. The baiters trade tips,
tales and trophies on thriving discussion boards like those at
419eater.com, scamorama.com and aa419.org. (The 419 refers to the
section of the Nigerian penal code that deals with fraud.)
My reason for scam-baiting is to waste the time and resources of the
scammer, said a scam-baiter with the Web name of Scam Patroller, who
declined to provide any identification beyond an e-mail address. Each
minute a scammer spends on my bait cannot be used to scam a real victim.
Their motives may seem altruistic, but not all law enforcement officials
approve of their tactics, which can include entrapment and public
humiliation. Many of the scam-baiters succeed in getting embarrassing
photographs of their targets posted on the Internet.
At first you might smile and think the trophy photographs are funny,
but I have seen some with fraudsters in highly degrading positions,
said Ralf Zimmermann, a crime intelligence officer in the financial and
high-technology crimes division of Interpol, based in Lyon, France.
They are fraudsters and they are not good people, but they have their
human rights.
A scam-baiter known as Jason dinAlt, who was interviewed online, regards
the scam practitioners as criminals who deserve any ridicule they
receive. (His online pseudonym comes from the science fiction novel
Deathworld.)
The humiliations delivered by scam-baiters can be as elaborate as the
scams themselves, including making the scam artists take complex and
expensive trips to pick up nonexistent payoffs.
My most prized trophies are not physical ones they are events, Mr.
dinAlt said. My lad traveled 300 kilometers four times to pick up money
that didnt exist, and he was physically thrown out of the MoneyGram
office and told to never come back.
Prized scam-baiter trophies include photographs of the practitioners and
their accomplices holding signs intended to humiliate them and saying
things like I am a bad person or making statements that are unsuitable
for print. The Web site 419eater.com uses photos of scam practitioners
holding signs as navigation tools for the site.
Other images involve embarrassing additions to the photograph, like the
fraud artist holding a fish on his head. One scam-bait video that turned
into a YouTube hit shows scam artists in a Lagos grocery store acting
out the dead parrot sketch from the television series Monty Pythons
Flying Circus.
Over the course of a lengthy correspondence, the swindlers had been
persuaded that the video would be entered into a contest offering a cash
prize.
The creator of that scam-bait, who identifies himself as Mike Berry,
published a book of his favorite scam-baits, titled Greetings in Jesus
Name! The Scambaiter Letters.
Mr. Berry once persuaded a scam practitioner to carve a full-scale
wooden replica of an old Commodore 64 computer keyboard.
Like all scam-baiters interviewed for this article, Mr. Berry, the
founder of 419eater.com, declined to speak on the telephone or provide a
verifiable identity.
Scam Patroller, in an e-mail exchange, said, I wont give out my home
number to anyone for obvious reasons of anonymity and safety, adding
that his companion did not fully approve of his hobby. She often
worries about me baiting criminals.
Cloaking themselves in digital anonymity through proxy servers and fake
e-mail addresses, scam-baiters invent multiple personalities and
sprinkle e-mail addresses into Web site comments as bait.
I usually limit myself to 10 different personalities at a time, Mr.
dinAlt said. Beyond that, it gets too confusing to keep up with each
story line.
Responding to the e-mail solicitations, the scam-baiters start an
exchange with the aim of moving up the hierarchy of the operation.
The lower-level responders often follow a standard script until a likely
victim is identified. At that point, the victim is passed to a
higher-level practitioner to extract money.
You tailor your bait to get the scammer off the script, Mr. dinAlt
said. Once you get them off the script, it is all downhill for the
scammer from there.
Once the fraud artist is hooked, Mr. dinAlt usually exposes some part of
the ruse as untrustworthy or dishonest, forcing him to show himself as
trustworthy.
We tell them that in Western countries, sending a photograph with a
sign is a symbol of trustworthiness, because a camera does not lie, Mr.
dinAlt said. Some are so greedy they will do anything to restore the
confidence of their intended victim, including pose with a fish on their
head or have milk poured over them while holding a sign with a silly
message.
Over the course of a lengthy correspondence, a bond can develop between
a swindler and a scam-baiter.
I know him pretty well, Mr. dinAlt said of a practitioner with whom he
had exchanged roughly 400 e-mail messages over 18 months. I know he was
married but separated because of his womanizing, and fell out with his
lifelong friend over cheating in a scam.
Despite respect for this persons intelligence and sympathy for his
financial plight, Mr. dinAlt said he held him in low regard.
He is an educated man in a country where there is no hope, and he could
have been successful in different circumstances, Mr. dinAlt said. But
he is a thief albeit from circumstances beyond his control but he is
still a thief, and that is something I wont accept.
For all the effort and time spent by scam-baiters, not everyone is
convinced that they make a difference.
Given the scale of the problem, it is like the scam-baiters are
cleaning a stadium with a toothbrush, said Suresh Ramasubramanian, who
manages antispam operations at Outblaze, one of the worlds largest
e-mail companies. This may be an entertaining hobby, but it is not
saving the world.
Still, Interpol says the illicit e-mail messages which hold out the
prospect of large rewards in exchange for small advance payments
cajole, threaten and ultimately defraud an increasing number of greedy,
naïve or frightened Internet surfers of billions of dollars a year.
These e-mail-based scams are growing as quickly as the Internet
itself, Mr. Zimmermann of Interpol said. Every new user of the
Internet is a potential victim.
---------------------------------
Don't pick lemons.
See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos.
_______________________________________________
Biofuel mailing list
Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages):
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
