Category: Nigerian 419 Fraud

Spam emails supposedly from Nigerian princes with fortunes in Swiss bank accounts, or beautiful Russian brides desperate to meet us are nothing unusual.

Most of us delete them without reading them – but Scottish author Neil Forsyth had a different idea.

Curious to find out just how desperate the spammers were for cash, he struck up email conversations with the senders.

After creating his own character called Bob Servant, he was soon dealing with unsuspecting con artists around the globe. He led them on with bizarre requests and surreal stories.

The resulting book – Delete This at Your Peril – won fans ranging from rock band Snow Patrol to writer Irvine Welsh.

Now a follow-up has been released and Hollwood star Brian Cox is playing the comic creation on the radio.

The ringleader of a Dutch-based internet scam that raked in up to $US2 million ($2.6 million) has been arrested in Nigeria, police in Amsterdam say. The Nigerian, who headed a band of fraudsters operating out of Amsterdam, was arrested in Nigeria’s economic capital of Lagos, police said. The fraudsters sent emails all over the world promising the recipients quick financial gains from a make-believe inheritance or fictitious lottery wins in exchange for “processing fees” of several thousand dollars. 419 Fraud 419 fraud is named after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes. Nigerian email conmen fall

Mike is a “scambaiter,” dedicated to fighting back against those who send out the notorious 419 e-mails, promising untold wealth to anyone gullible or naive enough to disclose their bank details. Mike asked us not to use his full name because he’s dealing with some heavy cross-border criminals. His group of volunteers at 419eater.com use their computer skills to fool the scammers, to disrupt their crimes, and to have some fun at the scammer’s expense. Every day, millions of people get e-mails like this: Dear Sir/ Madam, I am fine today and how are you? I hope this letter will

It has been described as the internet’s first blood sport and is fast becoming one of the web’s favourite pastimes. Fed up with having their inboxes clogged with emails from Nigerian fraudsters promising untold riches, the victims are finally hitting back. Scam-baiting – replying to the emails and stringing the con artists along with a view to humiliating them as much as possible – is becoming increasingly popular with more than 150 websites chronicling the often hilarious results. Known as 419 fraud, after the section of the Nigerian penal code that it contravenes, the scam generates millions of pounds each

An enticing email…promised cash…a trail of victims….Despite warnings, Americans continue to lose millions to Nigerian con artists If you have a public e-mail account, chances are that sometime in the last few months you received at least one official-sounding message from someone in Africa making an offer that sounded too good to be true. It is. But that isn’t stopping people from falling for it. Every month, federal investigators say, hundreds of gullible Americans lose staggering amounts of money to one of the most well-organized rackets on the Web: the Nigerian 419 scam. Led by gangs of Nigerian con artists,