Yeah :). Did you read all pages? First time I missed that there were more than one page.
I recently answered an apartment ad on craigslist. The good news was, I got the apartment! The WTF news was, I had to wire the deposit to Nigeria. Seems the landlord was on a Christian mission with his wife and children.
Guess what happened on the second ad I answered?
Who knew there were so many Seattle landlords doing missionary work in Nigeria. Unless, wait a minute, maybe I misunderstood which meaning of “missionary” they meant. After all, they *were *trying to fuck me . . .
Godstime, the Nigerian in question, never asked me for money. He eventually just vanished.
Thanks for that update. How long did the dialogue continue after what you posted in the linked thread?
I can’t recall if it was a few weeks more or a few months more.
I often wonder what exactly Godstime wanted. Did he think, as often happens online, that as an American citizen I would be able to help him come to this country? Was he secretly in love with me and too shy to admit it?
I don’t think we can ever rule out the possibility that he was a scammer that just couldn’t find the right way to start closing the deal, but it may be he was just some lonely nutter, or hopeful hanger-on.
And they let you keep it? Wow. If I had of been the Credit Union employee, I would have insisted that you hand it over.
I wasn’t that librarian, but I have seen that at my library, and my mom (also a librarian) has as well.
Here’s another example from Oregon
Woman out $400K to ‘Nigerian scam’ con artists
Story Published: Nov 11, 2008 at 3:01 PM PDT
Story Updated: Nov 21, 2008 at 5:30 AM PDT
By Anna Song KATU News and KATU.com Web Staff
Janella Spears, a nurse from Sweet Home, Oregon lost $400,000 (four hundred thousand dollars) to scammers - emptied her husband’s retirement account, mortgaged her house, took out a lien on her car. A choice quote: “Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted.”
Scambaiters soon realize that most scammers are dumber than bricks: not all are especially gifted.
It’s not about fooling somebody: scams work by jamming the emotions so that people suspend their better judgment. I hate to say it, but most of us are susceptible in one way or another, though this typically expresses itself in matters of the heart. True, old age can play a role, but there are also a variety of victim-types. Some are addicted to wishful thinking. Others seem to think that success is a result of strength of will or intensity of faith, as opposed to a meeting of skilled effort and the facts on the ground.
Anyway, a lot of the scammers apparently don’t think very hard about the mechanics of their methods, which is why reverse-scams are possible.
Here in India , there are lot of nigerians getting caught every week ( when they come to collect installments of processing fee). It is regular news here. Lots of people who lost money do not file any police complaint,since they will be branded suckers.
It is a pity how some supposedly intelligent people get caught in this. One man founded , and headed a consumer rights organisations for almost 3 decades. But all the reputation he built crumbled one day, when he used the organsation money , in the get rich quick scheme to help a friend. :eek:
Australian financial advisor banned for life for losing $700000 of someone else’s money to a Nigerian scam.
http://www.moneymanagement.com.au/Article.aspx?ArticleID=227653
If no one was ever fooled by the Nigerian scams then there wouldn’t be any. The scammers would move on to ‘fresh woods and pastures new’.
It’s the same principle as spam. For every million you send out you only need a few to hit the target. It costs them nothing to send the emails.
I didn’t try to cash it. I handed it to a teller and asked her if it was real or fake. As soon as she saw the serial number of the check she knew it was fake. I told her that I was screwing with a Nigerian scammer and she handed the check back and said have fun and that I should report the scammer to the FBI.
It wasn’t email, but the husband of a good friend of my wife’s get caught by a snail male scam sent in 1990 or so. He has an upper first class degree from Oxford! However he also has had MS for several decades and my physician daughter-in-law says the disease can have cognitive effects. He got his wife to sign a mortgage application somehow and actually went to Africa. To the end he refused to believe that it was a scam. His wife divorced him to save her own savings. They eventually got back together again and are living on his pension (that cannot be touched); he has been declared financially incompetent and she has complete power of attorney over finances. They sold their house in Montreal and moved into a small house in a small town in Ontario near where their daughter used to live.
My first rule of investing is: if something seems too good to be true, it almost surely is.
I listed a Dell Axim PDA on eBay a couple of years back. The winning bidder had a location of Malta, but when the “payment confirmed” email arrived the delivery address was Lagos :rolleyes:
The bidder had zero feedback so I was already wary, but the Paypal confirmation email looked utterly genuine. It even had a disclaimer saying the due to technical upgrade work the money might not show in my paypal account immediately, and sure enough when I checked there was no cash credited.
If I hadn’t known about 419 etc I can see how easily a person could have been fooled.
Heh, this probably explains why he fell for it. 
Wallenstein
(MPhil, Cantab) 
Why don’t we see these same scams from countries other than Nigeria? If it is so profitable, I would think the the Russian mob would be into it in a big way. Perhaps there are some, but the overwhelming majority seem to be from Nigeria, and that seems odd.
There are many dating scams originating from Russia. I get plenty of such mails with a nice looking girl who wants to find love.
There are a lot of Russian and Philipino girlfriend scams. (On 419eater, there was a baiter whose specialty was getting photos of the ladettes with underwear on their heads). There are also tons of classic 419s from other countries in West Africa, such as Togo, Liberia, Senegal (home of the really brick-dumb girlfriend scam), Burkina Faso, Benin, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast.
One day somebody will work out how to work penis enlargement and hot lonely Russian chicks into the 419 scam, and then the world will tremble.