Who falls for these anyway?

[Dr.bob7]

have you seen those fake check commercials on TV i mean it says thats why most are carried out online, now who would actully belive they won the lotto in a 3rd world country if they got an email  :-/
I mean come on and people wonder why theres so much fraud lol

[BFMF]

[quote]ho would actully belive they won the lotto in a 3rd world country if they got an email

[Katahu]

I have a better chance winning the local lottery here in Florida.

[a1]

in my earlier days of the computer I ran over some of these. I almost fell for it as I was really new to email stuff but when I saw the words "send us your personal information" i really was scared.



I know a lot better now.

[legoalex2000]

ho would actully belive they won the lotto in a 3rd world country if they got an email  :-/
I mean come on and people wonder why theres so much fraud lol

Some people are a little daft...

My favorite is the e-mail from some random dude in Nigeria telling you that some rich person died, and they need to get rid of some money, and if you send him all your information along with some money, he'll deposit a lot of money into your account

ahh your classic 419 Scam, i'm a scambaiter, so i've seen some of the junk they try to pull over people. im not gonna mention any more details about what i do, but if your interested in this stuff, www.419eater.com is good reading material.

Ramos

[BAW0343]

ho would actully belive they won the lotto in a 3rd world country if they got an email  :-/
I mean come on and people wonder why theres so much fraud lol

Some people are a little daft...

My favorite is the e-mail from some random dude in Nigeria telling you that some rich person died, and they need to get rid of some money, and if you send him all your information along with some money, he'll deposit a lot of money into your account

ahh your classic 419 Scam, i'm a scambaiter, so i've seen some of the junk they try to pull over people. im not gonna mention any more details about what i do, but if your interested in this stuff, www.419eater.com is good reading material.

Ramos

Ohh yea thats right, you are a member on there now.  I was for a bit then I lost focus with my baits and moved to a new hobby.  Its great fun to mess with them but many, many people fall for these scams every day. Some people wern't issued the right amount of common sense when they were growing up  ;)

[MattNW]

have you seen those fake check commercials on TV i mean it says thats why most are carried out online, now who would actully belive they won the lotto in a 3rd world country if they got an email  :-/
I mean come on and people wonder why theres so much fraud lol

A lot of people do and the lottery scams don't appear to originate in a third world country. They do of course but you can't tell that unless you look up the IP# in the email headers (how many people know how to display an email header least of all how to look up the real origin by the IP#). The lotteries are usually named to make them seem legit ie. UK Lottery, Microsoft Internet Lottery etc. Often they even copy the actual website of a real lottery and put that up on their own servers or servers run by organized crime.

The loss of money is calculated to be in the billions and that's conservative because a lot of the time the scams go unreported because of shame and embarrassment on the part of the victims. In Nigeria (one of the countries notorious for online scams) it's the third leading national product (with oil and either gold or diamonds being first and second). This is mainly due to a corrupt government who refuses to prosecute these scams. In fact the advance fee scam is also known as the 419 scam which is referring to the section of the Nigerian legal code that makes advance fees illegal. It's sort of a joke because usually if someone actually gets arrested for advance fee fraud they just pay a bribe to the police and are back in the internet cafe an hour later with an admonishment to bring twenty five percent of the money they make to the police station to keep from being re-arrested.

Most often however the fake check scam comes as a job offer. You will be told that a multinational company has trouble cashing checks in your country and offered the job of cashing the checks and wiring the money to the company's main office by Western Union or Moneygram. Both services are untraceable. A lot of email addresses of scam victims are picked off of job and resume posting boards so many people see it as a legitimate job offer. The scammers are getting more and more sophisticated too. Now they have websites that look legit unless you have a lot of internet experience. Here's an example. I've been trying to get this website shut down for weeks now. The site is probably run by organized crime. The site is very recently set up and the contact info looks dodgy with a yahoo email but I figured it was worth trying to shut it down.  http://pexplorergau.my-place.us/ Now consider you are looking for a job and have posted your resume online in several places. You get an email from a foreign company explaining they are opening an office in your country but yet don't have the paper work done. In the mean time they need someone to receive and cash checks from customers in your country. If you are dependable they might even consider you for the head of the local branch they are trying to set up. The job will take only an hour or two a day and pay can reach into six figures easily. They include a link to the website above.

Also banks have to make the funds from deposited checks available within a very short time. Not near enough time for the checks to really clear. In other words every time you deposit a check in your bank you are receiving credit for the amount of the check for from several days to a couple weeks. Sometimes it can take a couple months for the check to completely clear. The scam is to get you to wire money to the scammers within a few hours or the next day. When the check is discovered as fraudulent you are on the hook for the money. You can also be prosecuted for check fraud yourself (a felony).

It's a good thing they are running commercials to warn people about this but the main reason people fall for these scams is because there is very little information on them. The commercials help but not nearly enough.

The lottery scam works differently. Basically it's an advance fee scam. You are told you won the lottery but to get your prize you must first pay some taxes or fees. The fees go on and on until you either stop paying or are out of money. This however isn't the end. There are a lot of scams that follow up the first especially if you have lost money to the scammers. One that comes to mind is the money recovery scam. You are informed that the people who stole from you have been caught and your money can be recovered. This usually comes in the form of an official looking email from some government agency. Next you will need to provide some funding to pay for paperwork etcetra and the scam begins anew.

They particularly prey on older people or people who are not internet savvy. Also are the people who are already in a financial crisis. That offer of millions of dollars or a high paying job cashing checks looks really enticing when you are on the edge of bankruptcy because you just lost your job.  

Some info sites:
http://scamvictimsunited.com/phpBB2/index.php?sid=e125cc3c50fbfa2d369bd340f5160156


In particular read the "Letter Archives" on the following website. The tables can be turned on the scammers.
http://www.419eater.com/index.htm

[MattNW]

Some people are a little daft...

My favorite is the e-mail from some random dude in Nigeria telling you that some rich person died, and they need to get rid of some money, and if you send him all your information along with some money, he'll deposit a lot of money into your account


ahh your classic 419 Scam, i'm a scambaiter, so i've seen some of the junk they try to pull over people. im not gonna mention any more details about what i do, but if your interested in this stuff, www.419eater.com is good reading material.

Ramos

You beat me to it. My favorite bait was selling a partnership in the world's first supersonic business jet to some guy in Nigeria. Actually it was the Excalibur from here at SimV. Got a nice trophy hand written contract on that one. I made him pay for it with the millions he was trying to ship to me. I figured a fake jet for a fake fortune was a good deal.

[Wii]

Yeah, believe it or not, tons of kids, say, around 8 years old click on those and fill them out. How do I know this? Cause this little 8 year old was staying at our house and we left him alone on our desktop for about an hour and we come back and the screen is flooded with popups that he filled out and a whole bunch of crap that he downloaded off this weirdo website. Fortunately there was no PERMANENT damage but if he dares touch my new computer he's dead.  :-?

[BFMF]

Sometimes i'll browse job boards, and i'll see quite a few jobs that promise thousands of dollars a month if work only a few hours a week from your own computer doing stuff like filling out some forms online. The catch is that you have to send them money first to get started....

[TacitBlue]

When I see these scams I wonder what started it. I wonder if maybe at one time there really was a rich dude in Nigeria who's son/daughter/whoever actually did need the help of someone from another country to get the money out. Or maybe there really are companies that need someone to cash checks for them. Don't get me wrong, I know better than to give my personal info away on the internet (or anywhere), but wouldn't it be cool to have a job like that?

[Fozzer]

..I might be an evil Sod, but I have very little no patience for Folks who readily fall for these obvious Internet scams, in the hope of making a quick "Buck"... [smiley=evil.gif]...!

They get what they ask for....An empty Bank Account!... [smiley=embarassed.gif]...!

..there's nowt so daft as "People"......!

F... ...!

[Wii]

..I might be an evil Sod, but I have very little no patience for Folks who readily fall for these obvious Internet scams, in the hope of making a quick "Buck"... [smiley=evil.gif]...!

They get what they ask for....An empty Bank Account!... [smiley=embarassed.gif]...!

..there's nowt so daft as "People"......!

F... ...!

They are just STUPID. [smiley=evil.gif] [smiley=evil.gif] [smiley=evil.gif]

[BFMF]

When I see these scams I wonder what started it. I wonder if maybe at one time there really was a rich dude in Nigeria who's son/daughter/whoever actually did need the help of someone from another country to get the money out. Or maybe there really are companies that need someone to cash checks for them. Don't get me wrong, I know better than to give my personal info away on the internet (or anywhere), but wouldn't it be cool to have a job like that?

Don't you think that if someone really needed to have that done that they would send, or hire their own highly paid lawyers, executives, ect instead of asking random people on the internet?

And how does one believe that he or she won a lottery in a 3rd world country without even buying a lottery ticket. Come on, it doesn't take too many brain cells to realize that's a scam...

[TacitBlue]

Don't you think that if someone really needed to have that done that they would send, or hire their own highly paid lawyers, executives, ect instead of asking random people on the internet?

And how does one believe that he or she won a lottery in a 3rd world country without even buying a lottery ticket. Come on, it doesn't take too many brain cells to realize that's a scam...

I agree totally. That's why I wouldn't fall for that, but they had to get the idea somwhere.

About those lottery scams- If someone believes that, then it's their own fault that they get screwed out of all of their money.