Comments?

A new and  insidious kind of scam... "This time tomorrow, I will have completed my Jump for Freedom. A 160 feet bungee jump at the O2 arena in London"...
Morgan Coleman... "I SPEAK GOOD BRITISH ENGLISH THEN YOU
Mohammed Abacha... I have taken so much of your insulting and abusive words.
Dr. Tutu Hassan wants sex... LETS LEAVE THE BUSINESS AND GO FOR THE REAL THING WHICH IS GIVING YOU ALL THAT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY, LOVE AND REAL MAN HOOD, BIG AND STRONG.
Remmy Abubakar... May almighty god forgive you and your so call pastor. I now find out that you and your pastor wants to robe me with my money.
Mary Smith, Marriage scam... "I was scammed for 22 thousand dollars by this person whom I met on an interracial dating site."
William Simon... It is true that most people make publicities in the internet that they have been scammed but if you were from here, you would have known that such publicities are made to cover up monies transferred out of Africa.
Cisse Issa... I feel i should not respond to your insultive mails that is why i have not be responding. You insult my personality
Joy Kobe... Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail. We have taken appropriate action against the Yahoo! account."
Adoption Scam... what you have to do if you wana adopt him is that go and make a payment of 500 dollas to this name and address...
Carlos Montoya... This dialogue  fizzled...
Ifedy's Scam  Dialogue  fizzled... "Why insult me in that way ?"...
Mrs. Ella Cheng Wong The longest scam letter and and not a bad one, too.
Scam from the Netherlands You offered me to my surprise transfer of 750 Million Euro cash into my account... (details)
Though of dubious social value in his To Catch a Predator TV series, Chris Hansen did a fine job in tracking down Nigerian scammers in London and in Africa... see Dateline NBC's To Catch a Con Man...  But it did not lead to even one arrest.

 Links
Nigerian scam news Romance scammers
Immigration scams Billing Scams
Scammers' IP addresses Only pictures
Pass it on! Humor
  Nigerian women

worm.gif (3649 bytes)      The NIGERIAN Scam Pages...


Scams -- Dishonesty -- Abuse
Did you get email from Nigeria ?

 


Morgan Coleman 1-800-568-8913

"The death of my father actually brought sorrow to my life."
 LINK:   Nigerian Humour


Scambaiter News

Welcome...
Last angry communication from a scammer:
   "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU ARE UP TO.
    I AM NOT THOSE FOOLS THAT FALLS INTO YOUR GAME TRAP." 
   
-- patrick_momba@yahoo.com
A Victims Recounts Her Story -
"We lost almost $400,000. We are just a middle class family, my husband is a physician and I am a nurse. We borrowed money from many places to pay these people. Now we lost our credit and everything else..." 
A Greedy Man Of god Reaps What's He Sows -
"Still, Worley, faced with an e-mail that would, according to federal authorities, eventually lead him to join a gang of Nigerian criminals seeking to defraud U.S. banks, didn’t hesitate."...   
newyorker.com

 

The cost of staying connected in Nigeria
Source:Wired magazine

Internet Café costs:
It costs $0.77 to connect to the internet for one hour, in Nigeria.
This is 28.1% of GDP per capita per day.  [May 2006]

           Other places...
Paris:     $ 4.86 ( =5.9%)
Shanghai:  $ 0.62 ( =3.7%)
Moscow:    $ 1.50 ( =5.1%)
London:    $ 1.78 ( =2.1%)
NYC:       $12.80 ( =11.1%)

 


 

 Who should read this 

In this eye-opening film, director Antony Thomas goes
deep into the heart of the Muslim world to explore the
history and current state of Islam. He also delves into
the personal lives of his subjects, who range from
ayatollahs and grand imams to simple farmers and
women living in veiled seclusion; their relationship
with this holy book reveals a complex, beautiful and
often contradictory guide for humanity.

By the time you have reached this web page, you are probably already familiar with the NIGERIAN 419 SCAM.  If not, you should GOOGLE 'nigerian scam'  you will find hundreds of very good descriptions of the scam. 

The scammer invites you to make an amazing profit, merely by helping him or her transfer 20 or 80 millions of dollars out of Nigeria.  The scammer will often indicate that he is religious, by closing with  "God bless you"  etc..

 

Do you want some fun? Click to fight back

 What you should do
Have some fun with him ! and write back!  ...or begin a conversation. 

Give the scammer a hint that you have some money saved away.  Become a spoofer, a baiter! 

Tell  the scammer that you want to help.  Let on that you appreciate his generous offer, which is usually 10% to 35%.  At first, don't tell him your name.  Later, don't tell him you real name, or anything real about you, like your bank account number!

He will insist to FAX or phone you, but tell him you prefer only email.  It's best to use an alternate email address, one that does not have our real identity attached to it. After a few rounds of email, ask him to send you his picture.

Be nice.

Tell him you can always recognize an honest face -- something like that.  Be stupid, gullible, or religious (it's all the same:) but act as if you are careful but a little greedy.  Eventually, ask for a little higher percentage cut.  Use our imagination.

Later ask him for a second picture, one that will show it's recently taken and has been taken especially as per your request, so that you know it's really he.  Don't always be grammatical -- you should seem just a little uneducated, religious, or rich. Use your imagination...

[December 2006]  
Here is the real telephone number of a REAL scammer. 
Call him. Be inquisitive but somewhat rude, if you can. 
He won't mind, he wants your money.

The Toll free telephone number is:
1-800-568-8913   It works!

Be careful, don't go too far.

Have fun!  Remember, you'll be doing others a service: 
While these scammers are writing to you to entice you to quick riches, they won't be emailing someone else!
 

  spoof (spf) n.

  Email

1. Nonsense; tomfoolery. 2. A hoax. 3. A gentle satirical imitation; a light parody. --spoof tr.v. spoofed, spoof·ing, spoofs. 1. To deceive. 2. To do a spoof of; satirize gently. [Origin unknown.] "You should let your readers know that Caller ID blocking does
NOT function with 800 or 9xx numbers. Whoever is on the other end WILL have the number of the caller if they want it.  And if they have access to the right databases, they will have name, address, housemates, family members, etc.
"

Regards, 
Max Modality on aa419.org

 

  One thing you should do...

Write to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and tell them the his email service is being used for the Nigerian spam.  You don't know the email address if the ISP?  No problem.  Suppose the Nigerian spammer is using an account such as daniel-chidi2004@uymail.com.  (This was a real spammer).  Simply forward the message to the spammer's ISP.  In this example you would send an email to one or all of these addresses:

   Note: When sending ABUSE reports --

If you exposed the full email header and it does not contain an X-originating-IP and X-Originating-Email, it means the message has been forged. This means that it is not from a legitimate account the Internet Service Provider  unfortunately will be unable to take action.

   ABUSE@uymail.com.       In general abuse@xxxxxxx.xxx will do the trick. 

Make sure you include, in our email the "blah blah blah"-long hearers so that the scammer's IP address can be verified.

This may catch the attention of someone and they will close the spammer's account.   Make sure you include the email Header information in your message.  This will give the Nigerian a setback, because he will have to start all over again because he will likely have lost all of his previous communication / information.

  JOIN the FUN !!   Correspond with these people


This came to me BY MISTAKE... It is communication from one Nigerian scammer to his mentor.   He accidentally attached this to an email exchange between him and me.  These Nigerians work in concert with each other. He really thought he has something -- a correct mugu :

THIS IS HIS LAST MAIL TO ME, AND MY LAST MAIL TO HIM IS UNDER, PLEASE GO THROUGH BOTH TO UNDERSTAND WHERE WE STOP FOR YOU TO KNOW WHAT NEXT TO TELL HIM FROM HERE.  PLEASE MY GUY THIS MAN IS A CORRECT MUGU*, SO WE NEED TO BE CAREFUL WITH HIM, YOU CAN SEE HIS QUESTION SO YOU KNOW WHAT TO ANSWER HIM. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTION JUST CALL ME AND I WILL EXPLAIN.

ASK HIM AGAIN WHEN HE WILL BE IN DUBAI TO TAKE DELIVERY OF THE CONSIGNMENT, AND TELL HIM THAT YOU WILL NOW GO AHEAD TO MAKE THE CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP TO HIS NAME, BEFORE ANY OTHER STEP.

*  Mugu is a term used by the scammers to describe their intended victims.  Roughly translated this term means "big fool".   Source:  http://baita.mugu.co.uk/

 

Im Falle eines Falles klebt UHU wirklich Alles.

Don't say glue, say UHU!

You'll be doing others a service:  While these scammers are writing to you to entice you to quick riches, they won't be emailing someone else!

Victims Recount Their Story  "We lost almost $400,000 on this matter. We are just a middle class family, my husband is a physician and I am a nurse. We  borrowed money from many different places to pay to these people. Now we lost our credit and everything else..."  http://newsletter.sandybay.com/h/N714I5409

Note:  Many Nigerian spammers will contact you more than once, using disparate names.  Be aware of this.

 Victims, Spoofers:    Emails received will be posted here, with or without name and email address.    Rebuttals are accepted, but you must give name and email address.                       

Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006
Subject: Nigerian Scammers

Greetings,

I recently came across your site on the internet. I am currently baiting and toying with a few of these 419 scammers. Anyway I wanted to comment on the section about sending the scammer a virus. I feel that this is a bad idea that will only hurt innocent victims and not the scammer. The reason being that most of these Nigerian scammers don't use their own computers for these scams. Rather they use internet cafes and public computers. So by sending a virus all you do is hurt and innocent business owner and the scammer simply switches to using a computer at a different location.

If you really want to hurt them you should bait them. By this I mean play along with their scam but keep asking questions, making outlandish demands, etc. This way you aggravate them and waste their time. Also another good way is to cost them money. Here are some ways to get them to waste their money:

1) Long international telephone calls. These add up very quickly. Especially when they have to call and leave recordings of prayers and whatnot.

2) Construct elaborate things for the church--if they have to erect a monument to tom cruise or something, its going to cost them a bit of money.

3) Its not free to print things out at a cyber-cafe. Nor is it free to scan them. At the cyber-cafe I frequented when I was in Ghana, printing something out cost the equivalent of 15 cents US

4) Anything that you have them send you costs them big money. Especially if they send it to an out-of-the-way location. Tell them to FedEx express it to some made-up address in a remote area of South America. Get the tracking number. Watch their money as it disappears.

Also I love making them take several trips to Western Union and the like. I tell them I have sent them the money. They go to pick it up and surprise, surprise no money is there for them. I then say, "oops I gave you the wrong MTCN number and give them another number. They go again but again no money. Its fun to see how many times you can send their dumb asses. lol


 Real  kill examples and replies                          BACK TO:  Scammers' IP addresses

Amazon.com  
   From: "Outblaze Abuse Desk" <abuse@outblaze.com> 
   Date: Wed Dec 18, 2002 10:30:06 PM US/Mountain
   To: INFO@N0WSCAPE.COM
 
 Subject:  This man is using your service to perpetrate the Nigerian scam --   please rely.
   Hello
 
   Thank you for contacting the outblaze.com abuse desk.
 
   The account you reported is now terminated, along with today's quota of sundry other Nigerian generals, bankers, engineers, attorneys and relatives of dead dictators.
 
  
Outblaze is one of the largest providers of webmail services in the world. As a responsible ISP, we hate spam, and we do not allow our network to be abused by spammers.
 
   There is only one thing that we hate more than spammers - 419 (Nigerian) scam artists abusing our systems.
 
   Please see http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/ for more about this well known scam. [...]

   We encourage you to use http://www.spamcop.net to send out automated spam complaints, if you face difficulties complaining manually to each
   spam you receive.
 
   Thank You
   Outblaze Abuse Desk
 

Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 09:24:54
Subject: Re: What is your spam policy?
From:
GO Mail MS <mailms@help.go.com>

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.

We are sorry that you had a problem with one of our e-mail users. The member is now banned. Thanks for responding with the Go mail address.

Once again we are sorry if this inconvenienced you in any way and appreciate your letting us know about this issue.

Regards,

Matt
GO.com Mail Team


Date:
Wed, 10 Sep 2003 18:29:45
Subject:
Re: Fwd: RE: ZENITH INTERNATIONAL BANK OF NIGERIA PLC (KMM1220796V43777L0KM)
From:
"
Yahoo!Mail" <abuse@yahoo.com>


Hello,
Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care. In this particular case, and based upon similar reports, we have taken appropriate action against the Yahoo! account in question, as per our Terms of Service.

Due to security restrictions of our custom messaging system, we request that you simply forward a copy of the message on to us as opposed to sending it in an attachment. Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,
Yahoo! Customer Care


From: "MSN Hotmail Customer Support" <abuse_en_wh_hyd@css.one.microsoft.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 06:00:10

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Hotmail Support about the spam you received. I am Dinesh and I look forward to assist you today.

I appreciate you for bringing this spam report to our notice. I have closed the account igiligi@hotmail.com you reported in accordance with the Hotmail Terms of Use (TOU). It is a strict violation of the TOU for our members to send objectionable material of any kind or nature using our service.

You can view our rules and regulations at: http://privacy.msn.com/tou/default.asp. 

If you have further questions, please contact us.

Sincerely,

Dinesh
MSN Hotmail Technical Support Representative


From: <[...]@newmail.ru>
Subject: BRANCH NO:47, CHING TAIO E.ROAD
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:45:48 +0400

Hi!
I read texts on a site
http://nowscape.com/suck/NIGERIAN_SCAM_Mohammed_Abacha.htm
How you think, what me has forced to read machine translations of this correspondence?

It that on this site I have got through the search machine organized on a
server yahoo.com by inquiry TAIWAN CHENG CHUNG BRANCH NO:47, CHING TAIO E.ROAD.

Names, e-mail, phone numbers, all miscellaneous and for single using but, eventually, all is reduced to these ill-starred bank essential elements.

In my case it not 80 million and not Bank Kajmana. Only the circuit all the same, «you should pay what to take advantage of the money». I would like to learn, who really stands up for this account to spit to it in an eye. If you
have real reasons as it to make, I shall share the information. I while keep confidential attitudes with this Nigerian and I wait for the help as to me to act.

By the way, the interesting detail which I have noticed in figure Nigerian_Scam_Cayman_Bank_bldg_enhanced.jpg . "ÁÀÁÓØÊÈÍÑÊÀß" is a name of station of the underground in Moscow if to me does not change memory. And painted over with yellow color above two details presumably it ­ "M" and "M" the Moscow Metro.

I expect interested persons.
Alexandr
BELARUS


Email to Yahoo

This is the Nigerian 419 scam from Andrew Agbo <a_andrew2@yahoo.com> ,  after several iterations of email. His original solicitation came form an Italian no-yahoo server, ["ANDREW AGBO"<aandrew@tiscali.dk> ] so I suppose you are not interested in that aspect. Please kill this guy's account or tell me what action, if any, you took. Thanks in advance.

Reply from Yahoo

Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005
From: "Yahoo! UK & Ireland Support" <uk-abuse@yahoo-inc.com>

Hello,

Thanks for writing to Yahoo! UKIE Customer Care.

Thank you for reporting this to Yahoo! It is prohibited to send unsolicited or 'spam' email from a Yahoo! Mail account as agreed by new users when accepting the Yahoo! Terms of Mail Service Agreement.

In this particular case, we have identified the account used to send this email and have taken the appropriate action to prevent it from being used again to send spam mail.

In the future, if you receive an unwanted email message that appears to originate from a Yahoo! Mail account, please forward the message with full headers directly to us at uk-abuse@yahoo-inc.com.

For further information about this specific type of fraud, please see:  London Metropolitan Police

Regards,

Customer Care - Yahoo! UK & Ireland

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email and any attachment is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended for the named recipient only.


From: servicedesk@timesgroup.com
Subject: Indiatimes Servicedesk
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005
Hello,

Thank you for your feedback. Your mail has been forwarded to the concerned person.  You can be assured of prompt and efficient service. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further clarifications or suggestions.

Warm Regards, Indiatimes Service Desk


From: Yahoo! India <in-mail-abuse@cc.yahoo-inc.com>

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! India.

Thank you for reporting this to Yahoo! It is prohibited to send unsolicited or 'spam' email from a Yahoo! Mail account as agreed by new users when accepting the Yahoo! Terms of Mail Service Agreement.

In this particular case, we have identified the account used to send this email and have taken the appropriate action to prevent it from being used again to send spam mail.

In the future, if you receive an unwanted email message that appears to originate from a Yahoo! Mail account, please forward the message with full headers directly to us at:

 in-mail-abuse@cc.yahoo-inc.com.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! India.

Regards,

Addley


Subject: Re: With due Respect (KMM93657487V69114L0KM)
From: Yahoo! Brazil <br-mail-abuse@cc.yahoo-inc.com>

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Brazil Abuse Department.

This is to let you know that appropriate action has been taken  regtarding henry.lawrence@rocketmail.com
immediately after your report, according to our Terms of Service.

Best Regards,

The Abuse Team
Yahoo! Brazil Customer Care


A reply from Ohio State University after reporting a spammer:

Here is an email from a NIGERIAN 419 scammer; your DOMAIN name appears with the address in this attached message. Please tell me what you did, if anything, by return mail.

Thank you kindly in advance for your reply.  [List of scammers]


Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:03:58
From: security-triage@osu.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University
To: nowscape@yahoo.com
CC: admin@osu.edu
Subject: Re: Fwd: I Await To Hear From You.

This email was sent from a compromised account on our server, which since has now been reset. Thanks for reporting it.

~Bryan


From: Windows Live Hotmail Support <abuse_cp@css.one.microsoft.com>
Date: February 28, 2011 2:24:47 AM MST
To: <nowscape@yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: SRX1149697500ID - Fwd: Barr George Mukamba.

Hello,

My name is Cathy from Windows Live Hotmail Abuse Team and I am responding to your concern about the fraudulent e-mail message that you received. I apologize for not replying to your issue, promptly.

KRP, I have closed the account "barrgeorgemkamba@live.com" that you reported, in accordance with our Code of Conduct (CoC).

To view our rules and regulations, visit the following Web site:

http://explore.live.com/code-of-conduct

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Cathy


 Link
Ask Leo -- Why does email bounce?


German Woman Leads Fight Against Nigerian Fraudsters

LAGOS, Nov 23: Five years ago, three Nigerian men tracked Frieda Springer-Beck to her village in Bavaria, put a gun to her head and told her to drop charges against a man she accused of staging an elaborate international fraud.

Now the 54-year-old German woman’s fight against Nigeria’s notorious junk-mail conmen is starting to see results.

Since May, Nigeria’s new anti-fraud unit, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (SFCC), has arrested more than 200 people for junk mail scams, including the man springer-beck says duped her out of 360,000 dollars in 1993.

The so-called 419 scam, named after the article in Nigeria’s criminal code outlawing it, has become so successful over the last 20 years that campaigners say it is now one of the African country’s biggest exports after oil, natural gas and cocoa.

The fraud swindles hundreds of millions of dollars every year from people across the world, who respond to junk e-mails promising them a share of non-existent fortunes in return for an advance fee.

"I know through my own experience how you feel when you say you have been cheated. Nobody is in a position to help you or wants to listen at all," said Springer-Beck, who moved to Lagos last year to push ahead with her campaign.

In 1994 Springer-Beck formed the international Nigerian interest group, an association of fraud victims battling the swindlers through Nigeria’s notoriously slow and corrupt justice system. The association is currently handling 89 cases.

None has led to a conviction and, up until may, the association had brought about only one arrest.

Nigeria’s inaction over the fraud helped earn it the dubious distinction of the world’s second most corrupt country after Bangladesh from the sleaze watchdog transparency international.

Nuhu Ribadu, who heads the EFCC, said property worth 200 million dollars has now been confiscated in connection with more than 30 cases now before Court.

A member of Parliament was among those arrested, and others are being held for the biggest ever 419 swindle, which was worth 180 million dollars and brought down a Brazilian bank.

"Our intention is to bring them to justice for the first time...To return the money to the victims," said Ribadu.

"419 has destroyed the credibility of our country. As a result of this it is almost impossible to do business. No one takes us seriously," he said.

Springer-Beck’s own 419 saga began in 1993, when a letter arrived for her recently deceased husband asking him to come to Nigeria to collect his interest on an investment in a Nigerian electricity plant.

She got in touch with the author of the letter, who recommended a lawyer to help her get all the information she needed. She took on the lawyer only after checking his credentials with the German embassy.

On her first of several trips to Lagos, Springer-Beck was taken to what she thought were the offices of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Officials presented her with documents displaying her late husband’s letterhead, showing he had invested a large, but undisclosed, amount of money in the country.

"Today I know it was the building in front of the Central Bank of Nigeria," she said, adding that she was fooled by security guards wearing CBN uniforms at the gate.

Although doubtful at first, she eventually paid her lawyer the 360,000 dollars he requested as a down-payment for staking her claim to the investment. After five months she realised she had fallen victim to a scam.

In August 1993, she tracked the alleged fraudster to his home in downtown Lagos and confronted him.

"He laughed at me, called me a snake," she said. "I told him if you don’t give me back my money I will find a way you will never forget me."

In 1995 the lawyer was arrested and held on remand for two years only to be released without standing trial, and the case has been adjourned repeatedly since.

But in May this year, he was arrested again by the newly created EFCC, and charged with defrauding a Dutchman of 1.7 million dollars.

Springer-Beck is optimistic.

"The cases will be successful. It is only a matter of time. You can’t change things at once which grew up over 20 years." (AGENCIES)

Source:  http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/web1/03nov24/inter.htm#1 



Nigerian web scam bilked Utah out of $2.5M
     B y   N a t e C a r l i s l e

Thieves apparently used a Nigerian-based scam to steal $2.5 million from the Utah treasury, covering their tracks by using intermediaries and a church address.

A Salt Lake Tribune review of the names listed in a search warrant as receiving or transferring money have names of African origin or connections to that continent. Michael Kessler, president of Kessler International, a forensic accounting and investigation agency in New York City, said the thieves appear to have used a simple scam that originated in Nigeria about five years ago.

The Utah theft is the first time he's seen a government victimized.

Experts:
 "Their IT people should
 have known better."

"Their IT people should have known better," Kessler said after reviewing a copy of the search warrant Thursday. "It sounds like any kid could have done this."

In one case investigated by Kessler's firm, thieves used computer software transmitted by e-mail to monitor financial information input by the chief financial officer of an Ohio insurance firm. Once they had the information, they diverted insurance payments to their bank account. About $1 million was stolen.

At least one address listed for the perpetrators in an affidavit filed with the warrant appears to be false. While it lists a Duncan N. Ongaga living on the second floor at 18 Union Ave. in Irvington, N.J., Irvington police detective Chris Jenkins on Thursday said the address is for a church -- and there's no second floor. Irvington police have no record of someone by that name.


John Reidhead, the director of the Utah Division of Finance, on Wednesday said his division has added procedures to verify direct deposit information and made other changes to prevent future fraud.

The search warrant, made public this week in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court, said someone in August obtained a vendor number for the University of Utah's design and construction department. They then forged the signature of the department's director and submitted paperwork to the state of Utah changing the department's bank account information.

Fraudsters logged onto a state Web site and submitted invoices to the state on behalf of the campus department. When the state paid the invoices, the money went to a Bank of America account in Texas.

The thieves reaped $2.5 million before the bank called the state to inquire why such large payments were going to the account.

The search warrant says the Texas account was opened by a man with a Minnesota driver's license. The warrant also makes reference to a truck driver, and a search of business records shows another name in the search warrants has a registered trucking company in Arlington, Texas.

Kessler said the thieves may have recruited intermediaries to open the accounts and transfer the money. The account holders may not have participated in the theft itself or known where the money came from, Kessler said.

Once the money moved to Texas, the warrant says, several checks were written to various people.

Attempts to contact any of the people listed in the search warrant Thursday as receiving or transferring money were unsuccessful.

Once the fraud was discovered, a Texas bank froze $1.8 million of the stolen funds. It's unclear how much of the remaining money has been recovered. The Attorney General's Office has declined to comment on the investigation or any arrests that may have been made in connection with it.

Source:  www.sltrib.com


Phishers get more wily as cybercrime grows
By D i a n e   B a r t z - Apr 17, 200 5:46AM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -  Phishing scams have grown up from the unsophisticated swindles of the past in which fake Nigerian princes e-mailed victims, who would get a big windfall if they just provide their bank account number.

Even as authorities try to stamp out that con and other e-mail and online scams, scammers are getting more wily and finding new loopholes to exploit.

The vast majority of e-mail is spam and an unknown percentage of that is meant to defraud. The scale of electronic fraud means that that the criminals can make huge profits even if only a small percentage of people are duped.

Phishing commonly refers to hoax e-mails purportedly from banks or other trustworthy sources that seek to trick recipients into revealing bank or credit card account numbers and passwords.

The U.S. Government scored a big victory in November when the web hosting company McColo Corp. Was taken offline. Estimates vary, but the Washington Post said that 75 percent of spam worldwide had been sent through that single company.

But the spam e-mails offering celebrity diets, cheap printer ink, erased credit card debt and amazing orgasms quickly found a new way to inboxes, according to Google's security subsidiary Postini.

Now spammers use a variety of computers to send out spam e-mails to obscure their origins, meaning that a dramatic McColo-style takedown will be harder to reproduce, said Adam Swidler, product marketing manager for Google's Postini.
And they've largely abandoned scams that are easy to see through -- like the Nigerian prince -- in favor of more sophisticated "location-based spam," which directs the victim to a Web site discussing a local disaster or similar issue. If they click on the offered video, the Web site downloads a virus to the user's computer, Google said in a blog on security.
Tim Cranton, a Microsoft cybersecurity expert, said there was no way to know how much money is stolen. "We don't have a way to estimate numbers because there are so many victims that you're not aware of," he said.

WHAT IS 'SMISHING'?

New technology means new ways to steal. One of the latest is "smishing," which is nothing more than a phishing fraud sent via SMS text messaging.

E-con artists are getting more sophisticated in approaching potential victims. One tactic has been to write spam that purports to come from a trusted source, like Paypal.

When Paypal, which is owned by eBay, learned that spammers were using its name, they put a digital signature on their e-mails and asked providers like Yahoo and Google to block any e-mail purporting to come from them which did not have that signature.

"We know how many they throw away and it's approximately speaking about 10 million a month," said Michael Barrett, Paypal's chief information security officer. "If the consumer never sees the e-mail in the first place then it's hard for them to get victimized."

"Phishing was not just impacting consumers, in terms of general loss, it was impacting their view of the safety of the Internet and that it was indirectly damaging our brand," added Barrett.

Security experts say they are seeing more and more shifts from outright fraud, where the victim will hand over their money, to the use of malware, basically malicious software which, among other things, collects passwords and credit card numbers for thieves.

"Those will then be sold on the underground market," said David Marcus, a threat research expert at McAfee computer security firm.

The person purchasing the passwords and card numbers will use that information to make purchases, get cash or create fake identities.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with police in the United Kingdom, Turkey and Germany, shut down one such online forum called Dark Market in October 2008 which, at its peak, had more than 2,500 registered members, according an FBI press release issued at the time.

But experts agreed that they didn't expect the problem to go away anytime soon, and that more people out of work could well mean more people like to fall for scams.

Marcus said many of the scams were nothing more than the digital equivalent of confidence tricks, although on a massive scale that can net some scammers more than $100,000 a month.

"These things only have to be 2 percent successful," he said. "Those campaigns are sent out to tens of millions of people at the same time.

(Editing by C y n t h i a   O s t e r m a n)

Source:  Arrived via email


News --
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent Fri Oct 7 2005

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The inventor of artificial testicles for dogs, Nigerian Internet scammers and a team that calculated the pressures created when penguins poop won Ig Nobel prizes for 2005.

"Literature" -- The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, "for creating
and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus
introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters -- General
Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq."

The scams are notorious for asking people to reveal their private bank
information to help fictitious characters transfer large sums of money.

Dog testicles, penguin poop study win Ig Nobels - Yahoo! News:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051007/sc_nm/ignobels_dc

 

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