Tracking Down A 419 Scammer
from the it's-about-time dept
There are a ton of folks who, when bored, have decided to mess with 419 Nigerian email scammers. They respond to one of the spams at random, and then either write up an article or an amusing webpage about the experience. That was interesting the first few times, but recently it's had a "been there, done that" feel to it. Now, a woman in Connecticut has gone one step further. Instead of just emailing with one of these scammers, she helped to get one arrested. Good for her. Maybe others will start doing the same thing, and it will help cut down on all those 419 scams. Of course, there are some risks involved, since Nigerian scammers are criminals and have been known to harm or even kill people. So, while it may sound like fun, it's probably not worth doing in all cases.
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To Catch a Courier...
It is similar to the government arresting the guide and not the smuggler, or the drug courier and not the dealer, but it is a start. Now they just need to work the guy to figure out who the master-mind of the operation was in order to arrest them and shut down the operation. The game isn't over yet, the government has just taken out one of the pawns.
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Techdirt = 419 Atttractor
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Re: Techdirt = 419 Atttractor
Ha! Yeah, I wish. To be honest, I pretty much assume that any email anyone posts here with is completely bogus.
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