A new 419 scammer, a new reply tactic

I got yet another Advance Fee Scam email yesterday; it goes like this:

I’ve had these before and mostly I just ignore them, but it’s occasionally fun to respond and play games (completely anonymously, of course - I wouldn’t dream of divulging any real-world contact info to these lowlifes).

So I wrote a small program that takes a piece of text and swaps some of the letters;
A is exchanged for E and vice versa; B<>D, N<>M, O<>U and V<>F, so
‘Hello, my name is Mangetout’
becomes
‘Hallu, ny mena is Nemgatuot’

So my first reply consisted of:

Today, I received another email - which is a copy-and-paste job:

So I need to ask some questions - see if I can get a personal response:

She is well writen for a person heavely sedated for pain.
Have fun fishing.

So Mr. Wemba (sorry, Dr. Johnson) got paid over $11,000,000 in 15 years while working for a railway company?

Sign me up!

Tickets please, all aboard the Skylark etc.

The funny thing about these scams, I think, is that the scammers never seem to have a grasp of how English names work - they’re always called ‘Mr Smith Jones Benson’ or something.

No wonder the fares are so high.

I have a UK mobile number you can use if you want. I’ll have to go home and look it up but it’s still valid as I use it when I go to Europe. At least then you’ll know you’re not bugging some innocent person.

I don’t think it will get as far as that, but thanks.

How did she unscramble Nemga Tuot?

‘She’ didn’t - when I set up that mail account, it was only necessary to provide a very sparse set of personal information, which wasn’t validated - so Yahoo thinks my first name is ‘Mange’ and my surname ‘Tout’, at least as far as that account is concerned. - and email clients that support the display of proper names will show it that way.

Anyway, I had a response:

-note again confusion over how English names work - ‘Mrs Grace’.

Anyway, my reply (with translation - on this board only, of course) for ease of reading):

Just for good measure, I also sent her a message consisting of nothing more than a Blikster translation of the famous ‘dagger’ monologue from Macbeth:

Well, ‘Mrs Grace’ just stopped replying; it didn’t help when I sent her attorney a message:

Neither did it help when I sent him some useful information about a famous recipe for rabbit casserole:

or when I sent Mrs Grace a short treatise on the importance of Christian witnessing in the cheese-marketing trade:

Or when I enquired with great concern about her failure to respond:

What DID help though, was when, out of sheer desperation, Mange Tout contacted his old dear friend Richard Dastardly (I had to reactivate the account), to request assistance:

Richard Dastardly then contacted Mrs Grace (being careful to forward Mange’s message inline, for authenticity):

And it appears to have worked; Mrs Grace replied to Richard:

and the attorney, Patrick Adams, has sent Mange a lengthy (but still impersonal and probably C&P’ed) email:

I’m glad he wrote that last bit in capitals, as it’s easier for someone who doesn’t speak English to understand, if you shout.

Teeny tiny bit concerned about the ‘travel to United Kingdom’ bit - that means the scammers are actually operating here on our soil, although this could be good, as there might be a way to get them to inadvertently expose themselves to the police… have to think about that.

In the scam this phrase appears:

‘I am married to Dr.Martins Smith Johnson who worked with chiltern Railways in England for over three decades before he died on 5th of July in the year 2003.’

Chilltern Railways has earnt money since 1996:

Since winning the franchise in 1996, Chiltern Railways has run scheduled passenger services

http://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/content.php?nID=6

Thought I’d poke around and see what happens if I ask a question: Richard Dastardly sent this message to Mrs Grace:

I’m expecting a frantic reply instructing me not to tell anyone…

Man, you are killing me! Keep up the good work.

Yes, keep up the good work, I’m enjoying this. The sad thing is, I was able to understand the first messages without the translation, what does that say about me?

You so need to post the entire exchange on http://thescambaiter.com/.

Well, Richard received the expected response (unprecedented speed of reply - this one came through within an hour of sending the message asking if it’s OK to consult a legal advisor):

However, it doesn’t explicitly forbid taking advice, so Richard has missed the point and replied thusly:

I think the goal will now be to try to introduce as many extra people into the equation as possible. Dr W. Ecks being the first. Mr Wycliffe Zedd will be next (I fear W Ecks and Wye Zedd may introduce complexities of their own, as they’re not going to be the best of friends).
(BTW, ‘Ecks for breakfast’ was intentional)

Well, it looks like Mr Mange and Dick Dastardly are going to get double-crossed by W Ecks; he just sent Mrs Grace this message:

Yes, but he’s been working on the railroad all the livelong day. It mounts up.

Ecks has made contact with ‘Barrister Patrick Adam(s)’: