So there’s a new email scam coming from Russia similar to what the Nigerians are doing and I want to know 1) how does the scam actually work and 2) do dopers have any suggestions on how to play with the scammer for my entertainment?
Mods: I put the question here because #1 is asking a general question. But if #2’s asking for suggestions would be more appropriate somewhere else I can split it up. Or if the back story is too long for this forum feel free to move it where appropriate.
The back story:
I have had an email pen pal in Russia for several months that I ‘met’ on a dating website. For two months all we have talked about is our lives and he has sent me several pictures of himself. His letters have all been fairly personal, long, and with a fairly elabolaborate ‘backstory’ and he had never asked me for anything before. One of the things we had talked about was that he was trying to immigrate to the USA. More recently he had found a connection in the VISA department who was going to help him out, and his uncle had told him he would give him the money required for the immigration process.
Today I got an email from him saying his uncle could not transfer the money directly to him because he is in the military stationed in Iraq and they are not allowed to do money transfers as a terrorism precaution. But his uncle could give the money in cash to his friend in the American troops, who could then transfer the money to me, at which time I could Western Union it to my friend.
Well of course I knew this was a scam (although I was impressed at the incredible amount of effort and creativity he put into it), but he had asked me to open up a new, regular, local bank account with no money in it. I was wondering how the scam would work. The only information I could find said that electronic money transfers don’t have the same oversight and waiting period as checks, so he could in a sense do the equivalent of writing me a bad check from one account and collecting the money in another before the banks caught him.
The questions:
So my first question is, how exactly would this scam work? I would think the banks wouldn’t transfer money that they couldn’t verify was legitimately present in the original account. They certainly place unreasonably long holds on regular checks. How do the scammers get away with this? And who ends up being responsible for the money? The original bank? The person being scammed?
Now I’ve heard that some people have turned the tables on scammers by making them take silly pictures of themselves or do amusing tasks like carving things. My second question is: do dopers have any suggestions of good ways to play along and get the most entertainment value out of letting them think I’m not on to them?