Sumner Redstone Confused By The Copyright Myth

Latest 419 Scam: Asking Your Friends For A Loan

from the HOPE-TO-READ-FROM-YOU… dept

Fri, Nov 9th 2007 2:25pm — Mike Masnick

It's been interesting to see how the so-called Nigerian 419 scams have evolved over time as people have become more familiar with them. In the past, it's often been difficult to feel too sorry for victims, as they were taken in by their own greed at the possibility of sharing in a large amount of illicitly gained loot. However, it appears the recent variations play less on greed and much more on charitable emotions. Last month, we wrote about Nigerian scammers exploiting the idea of cute puppies needing a home, and now comes a report that the latest trick is to combine phishing with a 419 scam to try to get your friends to wire money to Nigeria, thinking it's to help you. It starts with a typical phishing scam, in an attempt to get your webmail password. Then, once the scammers have access to your webmail, they send an urgent email to all of your contacts, saying that you are in Nigeria, and you lost your wallet and are in serious trouble, and are requesting a quick loan wired to Nigeria. Of course, the emails seem to be sent out to just about everyone, meaning that many people will realize it's not true. At least in the example above, it's written in typically bad 419-scam "English," making it obviously fake. However, it's likely that this will continue to evolve and get better as well -- again, preying on people's best interests rather than their greed.

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Filed Under: 419, nigerian, scam

20 Comments

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Nigeria!, 9 Nov 2007 @ 2:56pm

"That's odd I just saw him yesterday and he didn't say anything about flying to Africa..."
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* Miss Universe, 9 Nov 2007 @ 3:32pm

Use the Phone
Hopefully, most people would have enough sense to call that person first or at least call a family member to verify.

A few years ago, they were placing calls to online businesses via the Sprint phone service for the deaf or mute and getting an operator to conduct a transaction for them while they type the correspondence into the computer.
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Sam Anwar, 9 Nov 2007 @ 3:50pm

Why is it that the majority of these scams originates from Nigeria? I am not trying to blame the whole nation for the fault of a few, but it's time for the people of Nigeria (and the Nigerian government) to stand up and fight those who are dragging their country reputation to the ground.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Nov 2007 @ 3:51pm

Man, that's gonna stink the next time I get stuck in Nigeria and email my friends for a loan. They'll think it's just a scam!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Nov 2007 @ 4:19pm

Got one from Benin, AfriKa yesterday. Tricked them into responding to my trapspam honeypot email trap.
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Mark, 9 Nov 2007 @ 5:54pm

Re:
Can't the same can be said about US based Pedophiles? Simply put, there either isn't money, or the willingness to spend the money to fix the issue.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Nov 2007 @ 6:30pm

um you do know that the Nigerian government is as corrupt as the scammers are, right? I have met a lot of people from Nigeria in my life time. Its bred into them to be corrupt. The oil industry goes to the few rich, and nothing to the poor or the country.
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BigEd, 9 Nov 2007 @ 6:48pm

Nuke em
I'm running a mail server at home and I see at least 6 or more of these a day trying to come through. They all go through spam checks and are nabbed. A real pain in the a$$. I can't imagine what the major servers are putting up with. The past few days I've tracking the IPs' and will ban all IPs from Nigeria from connecting to my server. The best bet is to nuke the whole countries computer systems...
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Max Powers at http://ConsumerFight.com, 10 Nov 2007 @ 3:08am

I must look like a sucker
I must be on every sucker list available. My problem is that I like to investigate each scam to see how innovative they are getting.

The bad thing is that pretty soon these email scams are going to get so good that it will soon be hard to tell which emails are real or fake even from someone that is used to these scams. I can see deleting real emails by accident coming in the near future.
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Hacked E-mailer, 11 Nov 2007 @ 7:49am

This happened to me
Luckily most of my friends & family realized the e-mail was fake.

Yahoo was completely unreasonable in "helping" me get my account back; it took well over 24 hours and would have been longer if I hadn't called back so many times & finally got one customer service rep willing to help.

Interestingly, the first e-mail they sent was to "larryweezy@yahoo.com". The total text of the message was "bvh" (not sure what that meant - maybe "big victim here."

Larryweezy's contact info is here:
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=87400579
& http://360.yahoo.com/profile-TgumEVw9erQwxYbzQdgQjPc4

Then when my husband pretended he would agree to send money, this is who the scammer gave as the contact info:

Name : Emmanuel James
Address : 100 Allen avenue
City : Ikeja
State : Lagos,
Country : Nigeria
Zip code : 23401
Text question : To who
Answer : Emmanuel
As soon as yo make the payment please get back to me with the sender's name,address,Mtcn# so i the hotel manager can have the money picked up.
Thanks and hope to read from you soon

I would love to be able to get this info to someone trying to fight the Nigerian fraud but Yahoo CERTAINLY isn't interested (despite their claims "we really care about you!").
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beefer, 11 Nov 2007 @ 4:13pm

Re: Nuke em
not just them. togo, benin (as was said), ivory coast, and ghana too! it's still nigerians doing the scamming but from every country they can get into. it's not that difficult to leave or enter any of the countries in western africa, as long as you have money to pay the corrupt border guards or can get around them. they will never change and the only way to fix the problem is get rid of the source. however they are not all bad as has been implied. i have met quite a few people from nigeria, having spent 2 years in western africa. 10% of the people are actually ok.
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Charity Volunteer, 13 Nov 2007 @ 7:40am

Charities Are Being Hit Up Too
419 scammers are going after charities too. It seems to have gotten worse this year. I volunteer with several charities that help Ukrainian orphanages. The emails use a Christian angle. The email normally goes something like...
my husband has died and we didn't have any children. We are good Christians and we want to save souls. We would want to save children. I need your help to complete a donation to your charity.
I haven't heard of any charities falling for it. But I bet at least one has.
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Charity Volunteer, 13 Nov 2007 @ 7:58am

Re: Charities Are Being Hit Up Too
If you are curious about the exact text of these "charity" emails, it is posted here:
Advanced Fee Fraud aka 419
My favorite line from the email is this one:

I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband's relatives around me always. I don't want them to know about this development.
She is just toooo sick (cough, wheeze) to answer the phone. And she doesn't want her relatives to know she is giving away the money. You see her husband's relatives are hovering around her death bed waiting for her to dead. And they would be really p*ssed off to find out there isn't any money.
So shhhhhh let's keep this a secret (wink). And you better hurry up before I die because my relatives won't be giving you a donation.
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shyba, 20 Oct 2008 @ 12:41pm

vgoedilzx7ut-qw
em f;qAEhfrtu]q
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KESHA, 20 Oct 2008 @ 12:52pm

THEY SHOULD BE A SHAMED
I RECIEVED A CHECK BY UPS FOR $5000.00 TO BE CASHED AND SENT TO THE GUY I WAS CORRESPONDING WITH ON LINE.HE SEEMED PRETTY NICE SO I BE-FRIENDED HIM.WRONG THING TO DO.HE SWEET TALKKED ME AND I FEEL FOR THE NICE TALK.BUT ONCE THE CHECK ARRIVED I FELT LIKE SOMETHING WAS NOT RIGHT. SO I GOOGLED THE INFORMATION ON THE CHECK AND WHAT DO YOU KNOW A SCAM.I TALKED TO THE LADY WHO WORKED FOR THE COMPANY BEFORE I COULD ASK ANY QUESTIONS SHE SAID YOU BEEN SCAMMED. IT WAS A CHECK FROM THE COMMERCE BANK. I CALLED AND THE ACCOUNT NUMBER DID NOT EXSIST. THE ADDRESS FOR THE COMPANY WAS WRONG ALSO. I AM HAPPY THAT I DID NOT GET CAUGHT IN A SCAM HE WANTED ME TO DEPOSIT IT IN MY ACCOUNT, BUT I TOLD HIM I DID NOT HAVE ONE. THANK GOD I HAD THAT MUCH SENCE.SO PEOPLE PLEASE BE AWARE OF WHO YOU ARE TALKING TO.
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poop, 19 May 2010 @ 10:22am

9089
you suck
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mim, 29 Jun 2010 @ 11:44pm

Please tell me,

How long do I have to tolerate all the following bulshit supposed to be originated from Yahoo? Isn't there anybody responsible to bring those people to Court, for trying to deceiving me into revealing my password which should then be used against my will and without my knowledge to all my contacts for illegal purposes?

................................
.........................

Final Warning!!!
From: Yahoo Customer Service Add to Contacts
To:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We are really sorry for any inconvinience this might cause you. Due to the congestion in all Yahoo! account users, Yahoo! will be shuting down all unused accounts. In order to avoid the deactivation of your account, you will have to confirm your e-mail by filling your Login Info below by clicking the reply button.

Full name: .........................................

Username: .........................................
Password: .........................................
Date Of Birth: .....................................
Occupation: .......................................
Country Of Residence: ........................

After you must have followed the instructions on the sheet, your Yahoo! account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thank you for your usual co-operation. We apologize for any inconvinience.

Yahoo! Customer Care
Case number: 2641930
Property: Account Security

Regards,
Yahoo! Account Services
-------------------------
We are really sorry for any inconvinience this might cause you.
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TerranSynth, 24 Jul 2011 @ 11:48pm

Friend Scam
One of the ladies who works for a fraternal organization apparently sent me an email from the Barbados, tellimg me their money and credit cards had been stolen. I replied that I had wired $2500.00 to her, and all she had to tell them to get it was the name of the treasurer of the organization. Pure BS, since I had called up the organization, and she had answered the phone.
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nation 21 loans, 20 Jul 2017 @ 5:01am

These scams are getting both better and more ridiculous. Some are very well written, and can appear genuine, but others are poorly written, with even more silly reasons as to why they need money sent to them. Even with my email settings on the highest restrictions, they still manage to get a couple through. While it is frustrating, and for those who have been scammed, it’s disgusting, I do think it’s a whole new level of low for these scammers to focus on charities. Not every charity would be able to recover from the financial implications of being scammed. thought there are many legit services out there offering totally outstanding loan offers like https://nation21loans.com/5000-unsecured-loan/ . You must have a good credit score to get approved from such service . Though we still suggests you to check for spam before trying anything .
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kates (profile), 18 Mar 2019 @ 7:36pm

scams should be stopped
In recent past, we have noticed many scams had happened at small or large scale. It can be stopped if we pay little attention to it. People must consider some legal services with legitimate companies such as https://www.paydaysunny.com and they can get personal loan without any hesitation.
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