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126 Comments
- Suspected, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28He was overcome by greed and that resulted with him depositing checks that were obviously not legit. If he wants to waste his own money, that's fine. However, he knew that these people gave him bad checks and yet continued to deposit them. That's not okay, that's immoral and apparently, illegal.
- 2gunnZ, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28Good read. I thought this was a fairly old scam but apparently there are allot of people out there who still fall for it, kinda sad really. You would think in this day and age people would be more cautious about things, but it seems that greed tends to negate good sense.
- VXMirage, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23A fool and his money are soon parted.
- wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19Very funny that I submit this story and just today I received this e-mail!
Dear Respectful One,
GREETINGS,
Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I got your contact from the International web site directory.
I prayed over it and selected your name among other names due to it's esteeming nature and the recommendations given to me as a reputable and trust worthy person I can do business with and by their recommenddations I must not hesitate to confide in your for this simple and sincere business.
I am Lucky Eze, the Only Son of late Mr and Mrs Dickson Eze. My father was a very wealthy cocoa merchant in Nigeria,the economic capital of Nigeria before he was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outing to discus on a business deal.
When my mother died on the 21st October 1984, my father took me and my younger Sister Juillet special because we are motherless. Before the death of my father on 30th June 2002 in a private hospital here in Nigeria.
He secretly called me on his bed side and told me that he has a sum of $10.000.000
( Ten Million, Dollars) left in a suspense account in a local Bank here in Nigeria, that he used my name as his first Son for the next of kin in deposit of the fund.
He also explained to me that it was because of this wealth and some huge amount of money his business associates supposed to balance him from the deal they had that he was poisoned by his business associates, So he told me that I should seek for a God fearing foreign partner in a country of my choice where I will transfer this money and use it for investment purpose, (such as real estate management). Sir/ Madam, we are honourably seeking your assistance in the following ways.
1) To provide a Bank account where this money would be transferred to.
2) To serve as the guardian of this since I am a Man of 27 years.
Moreover Sir/ Madam, we are willing to offer you 10% of the sum as compensation for effort input after the successful transfer of this fund to your designate account overseas.
Anticipating to hear from you soon.
Thanks and God Bless.
Best regards. Lucky and Juillet eze. - alexander000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14This is by far the best 419 Scam story ever...
http://www.419eater.com/html/martins_davis.htm
The tables get turned as the scammer gets scammed. Truly hilarious!
complete with recorded phone calls and video! - digitalgopher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14You should submit their email address to a spam site so that they get spammed to oblivion. in fact, I might start doing that myself...
- capn_caveman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14This is one of the longer reads on digg that I've read from start to finish. I suggest everyone does the same. Very interesting.
- foobario, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13He's not just an idiot, he's delusional... he can't distinguish between cartoon-like scenarios and real life.
The story the scammers doled out sounds like a plotline from a Dudley Dooright cartoon, where they tie the damsel to the traintracks... and this guy jumped into the 'noble hero' role with both feet. His grasp of reality seems to be very tenuous - even after being sentenced and fined, he was hoping that the Nigerians would get back in touch and help him out. He's living in Fairyland.
It terrifies me that there are people out there who fall for scams like this. I'm not afraid of the scammers - they're just criminals. The people that buy into the scam are lacking some essential reality-validation skill, and that makes them dangerous. - doctornakul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13http://www.419eater.com/
- wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+121st return e-mail luckyeze251@yahoo.com
2nd return e-mail ezec5@myway.com
Maybe someone has a good idea for what to do with these return e-mail addresses. - Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17Little wonder he got scammed; the man's been believing fairy tales his whole life...
- WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14@dilivion
"what would be a good word for "digg etiquette"? Any ideas?"
How about STFU.
:-) - curtvdh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Similar advance fee scams are now showing up on eBay as well. A few months ago, I put my son's PS2 plus a bunch of games up for auction. Next thing I know, I get an e-mail from some Dude offering me a $300 money order for the lot, if I would close the auction immediately. Of course, I immediately knew it was a scam, but I decided play along anyway (I was bored).
So I told the guy that would be fine, but he would have to use an Escrow service to hold the money before I sent him the PS2. Sure, he said, no problem. About an hour later, I got an e-mail from the Royal Bank of Canada to say that they were holding $300 in escrow for me. First thing I did was check the headers - turns out the RBoC is a free Webmail service (surprise! - not). Plus, the scammers ip address was also in the header - turned out to belong to a Nigerian ISP (again, surprise! - not). Anyway, I told the guy everything was cool.
About 2 days later, I get a pre-paid, second-day air UPS shipping label delivered to door. Since the weight was not printed on the label (big mistake, bro), I packed up six large masonry bricks in a box that I swiped from behind a grocery store. Total weight - close to 60 lbs. Scanned the label for the shipping address (Miami, for some reason), and arranged for UPS to pick up the shipment. Meanwhile, the eBay auction finished, and the PS2 was sold legit.
About 3 days later, I get a *really* irate e-mail from the scammer - Turns out he had to fork over nearly $200 in shipping costs. He was so spitting mad, he threatened to come over to my place and do some seriously bodily harm to me. I pointed out that a) he didn't know where I lived (the address that I gave him to send the label was a UPS store), b) I had already informed my ISP about the scam, and they would refuse hand over *any* personal information and c) the RBoC doesn't take kindly to people forging e-mails purporting to be from them. I also told him the name of the Webmail service he had used, along with the IP address that was assigned to him by his Nigerian ISP (the name of which I also knew), plus the local time he was logged on to the Webmail service.
I thought that was the end of it, but lo and behold I get yet *another* e-mail from the guy. Get this. He say's he's sorry and promised to 'change his ways' (probably scared *****, since I appeared to know everything about him). He also asked if I could reimburse him for the shipping costs, since he was now (he claimed) flat broke and couldn't feed his family. I told him that I didn't care whether his family starved or not, plus I had already handed over all the e-mails and the Miami shipping address to both the FBI and Nigerian 419 Task Force.
Never heard from him again. - wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11and this one.....
FROM THE DESK OF:- DR CHYNDU EZE
# 52/57McPHERSON AVENUE,
NNPC COMPLEX,
IKOYI,
LAGOS,
NIGERIA.
Attn: Sir/Madam,
I am the Chairman of the Contract Award Committee, Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Lagos, Nigeria.
In my desperate bit to get a person to assist me in the transfer of
TWENTY MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS; And subsequent investment in properties in your country, I surfed the internet, got your e-mail address and decided to contact you straight away. My expectations are that:-
You will be required to:-
(1) Assist in the transfer of the said sum
(2) Advise on lucrative areas of investment
(3) Assist me in purchase of properties.
If you decide to render your service to me in this regard, 20% of the total sum will be offered to you.
Please, quickly get back to me on my alternative email address: ezec5@myway.com if this proposal interests you.
Regards,
Dr.Chyndu Eze.
Chairman of the Contract Award Committee {CCAC)
- Dimensio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I must admit, I too have had dealings in the past with such individuals. I have chronicled my personal story here:
http://members.iglou.com/darkstar/birthdaybait.html
I suffered far less than the subject of the article, but I do believe that lessons can still be learned from my experiences. - wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12did you read the article? Please go into more depth of what you are trying to say. I posted both of those e-mails I read today because they have everything to do with this article. I don't quite understand your request.
- Stegg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I'm sorry, but this idiot got exactly what he deserved. Social darwinism, anyone? Alarm bells should have been going off when he saw the first check that wasn't from the nigerians themselves. He's either extremely stupid, or extremely greedy. At any rate, this mark is as guilty of laundering as the nigerians. Without him, the fraud would have never occurred. Two years isn't enough.. this guy should never be allowed to have a bank account again.
- sagedude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10He got what he deserved. 419 scams rely on peoples greed and willingnesss to break the law(money laundering)
- briangig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8sounds like the guy deserved it. Even if he fell for the initial scam, he should have cut off all contacts and ties with them after the first check was proved to be fake...
- Spanca, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I cannot believe that people are actually stupid enough to fall for these sorts of things? People don't give away tens of millions of dollars to people they've never met before!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7It seems to me if he was just able to send that last $3000, everything would have been fine!
- lemorex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"Thanks and God Bless."
I wonder what percent of the Nigerian population would you God Bless... - CamperBob, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14What it actually indicates is that some people will believe pretty much anything.
When you want to find people like that, a church isn't a half-bad place to start. - wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I don't like it either, but this was a special circumstance, if you check out my 490 other posts you will see that I do not make a habit of doing that. As far as the joke thing I did not get it, obviously, I will try to be more on the ball next time. Its all good. wayjer ~ added thank you ; )
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I got one from koffi anon saying he wanted to give me 10 million dollars, crazy spammers next they will start calling us.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6we got the classic next of kin scam the other day...
the difference though was it was through snail mail, from sweden, with proper swedish postmarks!... if it wasn't a cut an paste job i may have looked into it... i could have used that cool 1.5 mill - soogy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7It's a very old scam, but sometimes the old tricks work best. There are always ignorant people in the world.
I dealt with one of those bastards, once. Though, they stopped responding when they found out the account number 31337 was false. - WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7"I don't like it when people follow up their own posts with lots of comments."
I see no reason why a person can't join in a discussion of any digg article. Just because they submitted the article, doesn't mean they have nothing to add to the lively discussion that follows. I wonder where that strange notion got started. Your opinion, I guess.
Often, the comments are the best part of digg.
(my only other comment: damn, that was a long story!) - geminem, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7But now these scams don't come from Nigeria only. The other day I got one that purported to be from Liberia.
- stevemchey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7If you really feel like doing something against these spammers, check out the scambaiting... It's an amusing counter activity that wastes these guy's time. Just follow some common sense since these guys can be potentially dangerous... You can find more info at http://419eater.com/
I did scambaiting for a while, but it took too much time out of my day... But it sure was fun... - wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@ anachron
A very old scam that is still going on today, see my two comments below with e-mails I just received yesterday afternoon, the same scam. - magstheaxe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Given your icon, I would think you would object to stereotyping an entire nation of people.
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6i was sent one of those nigerian messages last week.. except it was Chad Republic
it made NO SENSE.. anyways, i replied to it.. (here's the original spam)
Dear
I do not know to what extent you are familiar with events and fragile political situation in my country Chad Republic but it has formed consistent headlines in the CNN, BBC news bulletins
I am Miss Aminata Mahamat Itno, from the Republic of Chad in central africa i am the daughter of Late Gen Abakar Youssouf Mahamat Itno. My late father was senior army commander in my country Repbulic of Chad,my Father was kill by rebels
The main reason why I am contacting you now is to seek you assistance in the area of my future investment and also for a help hand over some huge amount of money in my possession. This money is Five Millon Five Hundred Thousand Dollars is deposited some years ago by my father he made me the sole beneficiary.
I am now asking you to stand on my behalf to make this claim,to stand as my partner oversea and in time of the investment as well. As I have mention earlier I will make the procedure to this issue to bewell know to you,if I am given the opportunity to do so. Pls send me your contact information to reach you
Thanks,i am waiting your mail
Yours Aminata
-----------------------------
Wow, I'm excited to work with you miss Aminata. I'll do my best to help you out in your perplexing situation.
I'll do anything you need me to do in order to take that painful cash off your back. I'm sure it brings back bad memories and I'd like to help you out by transferring it to my account.
-Daniel K
Tacoma, WA - USA
--------------------------------
Dear Daniel K ,
Thanks for your mail,nice to read from you,but you did not tell me much about yourself,i will like you to tell me more about yourself.As I have stated above I am a from Republic of Chad,but presently residing in dakar senegal with my younger sister,due to the war in my country Chad,i was lucky to be among the survivors rescue by the UN who brought us here.
Presently i live in a missionary hostel in Red Cross Relief Camp with many other girls of defferent Ages from war ravaged country's in Africa.As both my mum and Dad are victim of war. I have no option than to be here which is a little safe than my country.though I have completed high school,but I have the ambition of becoming a doctor in future.my father was a senior army officer,he was kill by the rebels.i want you to help me to come over there to meet with you.
and you will also help me and my sister to get a good school where we can further our education.
you will help me to invest this money into a good profitable business.
i will give you 15% of this money for helping me,after your take away any expenses if may be, after you receive this money.
have a nice day.
yours aminata
--------------------------------
Ohh yeah, I'd like to totally ***** your ass, bitch. Looking forward to
our meeting.
Let me know how you want it. I'm cool with doing it from behind, but
I'm not sure about giving you oral. Of course, you'll have to do
whatever I want you to do with my *****, whether you like it or not..
but I know you like it.
Have a ***** day.
Your hot sexual love machine, Daniel - diotro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I'd like to see who these people are, the scammers I mean.
Then I'd like to see them with a baseball bat across their face. - dmoffitt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5 “Why don’t they assign an F.B.I. agent to go after the people who scammed my husband? Where’s the justice?” (his wife) - um, perhaps because the FBI investigates things INSIDE the US?
- fascistpig, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I'm glad there's another geek like me who reads the New Yorker.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4anyone who gets burnt with this deserves to lose out for being such greedy pricks.
these letters all solicate smuggling money out of a country in an illegal manner. - DoubtfulSalmon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Ditto... for the first time in months I got a 419 email this morning... thus:
FROM: DR ROBERT H. FAHY (PRESIDENT)
ROBERT FAHY, UNIVERSAL IMPORT AND
EXPORT GOODS COMPANY
23RD FL, 363 JAVA RD, NORTH POINT
HONG KONG.
DEAR SIR/MADAM,
I AM DR. ROBERT H. FAHY, WE ARE A GROUP OF BUSINESS
MEN WHO DEAL ON RAW MATERIALS AND EXPORT INTO AMERICA,CANADA,EUROPE AND
ASIA. WE ARE SEARCHING FOR REPRESENTATIVES WHO CAN HELP US ESTABLISH A
MEDIUM OF GETTING TO OUR COSTOMERS IN YOUR COUNTRY, AS WELL AS MAKING
PAYMENTS THROUGH YOU TO US.
PLEASE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN
TRANSACTING BUSINESS WITH US WE WILL BE VERY GLAD. CONTACT OUR
PROCUREMENT OFFICER IN UNITED KINGDOM. MR. DAVID A. COTTRELL THROUGH E-
MAIL (dcottrell@laposte.net) FOR MORE INFORMATION.
SUBJECT TO YOUR
SATISFACTION YOU WILL BE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO NEGOTIATE YOUR MODE
OF WHICH WE WILL PAY FOR YOUR SERVICES AS OUR REPRESENTATIVE.
PLEASE IF
YOU ARE INTERESTED FORWARD TO US YOUR PHONE NUMBER/FAX AND YOUR FULL
CONTACT ADDRESS.
THANKS,
DR. ROBERT H. FAHY, PRESIDENT
ROBERT FAHY,
UNIVERSAL IMPORT AND EXPORT GOODS COMPANY
GOODS FOR IMPORT / EXPORT &
FREIGHT FWDG. SVCS. - DannySpace, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I think it's truly unfortunate that he fell for this. I'm not saying it isn't his fault but you can't tell me that you've never "wanted" to believe something so bad that it somewhat overcomes your urges. I've been there, luckily I never followed through but I've wanted to believe. The fact that he's a man of god also makes this so emotional. It's as if he was swindled by Lucifer himself. What a tragic defeat. I'm sure he hates looking at himself in the morning. I'm sure he wishes he were dead. Greed, what a ***** sin to bare! It makes Vanity look like sunshine.
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6excellent comment silencer. it's true.
- dwight0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5is this him ? is this real ? http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/view_profile.php?userid=48960
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Gotta love it when evil people prey on each other. Still, I would have given him 90 days suspended plus restitution at $50/month. He didn't actually know those checks were bad, presumably, and the only laws he conspired to break were Nigerian ones, and heck, all the Nigerians are breaking them so it must be fine, right?
- spc2226, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5As far as you know..
- frederoil, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4let's not go overboard with our hatred. Not all Nigerians are scammers. A good friend of mine is Nigerian and he isn't a scammer.
- WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"This guy knowingly tried to steal from other people so that he could steal from someone else. Screw him, two years isn't enough time."
Ironically, while he is in prison, he might learn enough to go out as a scam artist on his own next time. - WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Funny...last time I talked with Kofi, he mentioned that you apparently didn't want the ten million...so he gave it to me instead.
- kiwimonk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5ha. hes a minister.. if he fell for religion.. hes bound to fall for anything
- jeroenrnl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"this is a good example of how nigerians are heartless, soulless, evil, criminals."
Yeah, and it's also a lovely example of how americans are greedy, stupid, hypocrite idiots. - olibird, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Great read and excellently written.
- nigel40, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Great post.
-
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