I was pretty anti-scammer until I listened to the This American Life episode from two weeks ago “The Enforcers.” They interview the people from the big baiter website, including the two guys who orchestrated the big send-the-scammer-to-Chad sting.
The radio show casts them (the baiters) in a pretty sinister light. For the show, the baiters read a desperate email from their prey, written from a war torn area in Chad where one of the scammers is injured, they’re both out of money, and the guy they’d hired to drive them is threatening to kill them. As they read the email, the baiters keep cracking up. From their perspective, this guy’s (possibly exaggerated) suffering is funny – but to an outsider their glee seems Satanic. And when called on this, their only defense is “well, you don’t understand how nasty these scammers are.”
After listening to the show on podcast, I’m a bit more neutral on the subject.
How do we know they’re writing from a war torn area, that they’re out of money, that they hired a guy to drive them, that he’s threatening to kill them? I listened to a small part of the link, but do they prove that the person is really going through that? If I had a dollar for every time I got an email from a “Russian Bride” that “lived” in New Mexico and wanted me to help her get from another country back here to see her kids…
Yeah, the This American Life story is what prompted this. I was kind of shocked to see people on the forum rooting for the scammer to be killed.
Yeah, most people wouldn’t initiate a scam like this. But, I bet if it was already happening most people would be tempted to roll with it.
And I realized that is what bothers me. In this story it was the guy’s brother who went with him to Chad who may or may not have been shot in the leg. It wasn’t just the scammer getting involved in this- it was his whole family. And in the end the scam baiters don’t really know who they are dragging into their plots. When it starts to involve other people it begins to be entrapment. And getting someone killed because you dangled the life of their dreams in front of them seems a little heartbreaking. Certainly not something to be laughing about and marking down on a scorecard.
DrDeth my experience with Nigeria is mostly among people living on the extreme North Eastern border. Nigeria is a relatively prosperous place, but access to jobs is difficult if you aren’t able to buy your way into the corrupt system. “Your life sucks because your country is corrupt” is plenty true, but also not a very useful statement. It’s not really the fault of the guy in the mud hut.
Of course there’s no proof. But these guys actually believed the scammer in this instance. And STILL took delight in his woes. It’s an interesting piece. You should check it out.
Leading a guy into a war zone seems a bit much. It’s one thing to say “Scammers are scum and they deserve what they get”, but does that mean you’d shoot them in the head if you got the chance? And if not, is it any better to get someone else to shoot them for you?
I think leading them into harm is wrong. Messing about with them and wasting their time, with the possible outcome of saving others from being scammed, or encouraging the scammers to give up is at worst, ethically neutral, IMO.
Point taken that they may feel themselves to be stuck in an absolute rut, but that’s no excuse for crime.
Besides, most of the photos I’ve seen on 419eater and other places don’t exactly depict scammers who are starving to death - Joe Eboh seems to have enough income to maintain his man-boobs.
I have no sympathy for scammers. I also have no sympathy for those who, despite being told they’re being scammed, still give over money.
There is a hierarchy in the world of scammers and those that get hosed are low on the totem pole. They are told to do x, y and z, then turn it over to a closer type person (the fake attorneys, often). I do feel minutely sorry for the mugu - they’re just tools to be used by their higher ups. Sometimes they try to break out and take a scam on themselves and that’s when you have the idiots running all over for supposed bullion / laptops / cellphones - or they’ve told their boss of a plum deal and are now being held to it.
If I can waste a scammers time running around, maybe that’s a thousand e-mails he’s unable to send out and possibly get a hit or two from.
Scam baiting is punk rock. It’s a form of fighting back at an oppressive, time-wasting, resource-tying, and unbelievably annoying thing, not only fighting back but using their own cheap, weasely tactics and then shoving them back in their face. The more scam baiting the better, I think.
The thing is, most of the Nigerian scam emails are phrased in such a way as to make the person being scammed think they’re stealing from the Nigerian gov’t (or a bank or whatever). So really the Nigerians can use the same justification for their scams as the baiters, that they’re only scamming dishonest (not to mention, very gullible) people who are willing to try and participate in a shady deal to gain millions of dollars they didn’t earn.
By what odd definition of oppressive? Scum, of course, but seems the opposite of oppressive, some half educated young men in a cybercafe sending out emails to scam the gullible.
But to the question in the OP, I think sending the scammers into a nasty war zone like Chad is beyond the pale.
Some of them, sure – such as the classic 419 versions involving stealing an unclaimed inheritance or laundering money. But there are plenty of Nigerian scams that don’t rely on the victim being willing to break the law. For example, there are various romance/Basic Travel Allowance scams and over-sized fake check/money order scams.
So unless you’ve got a cite, I’m disinclined to believe that most of the scams require the victim to commit a supposedly illegal act.
But this exactly what the scammers do. They get more people involved that just the mark, marks have borrowed money from their parents, friends, and siblings because the 419 scammers have dangled the life of their dreams in front of them. Sending these two guys to war torn Chad to be killed or wounded is not really funny in my book, but neither is financial ruin, losing your life savings, bankrupting your family or suicide due to being scammed. Fuck them. They deserve what they get. That said, I don’t believe the baiters are paragons of virtue either.
I know the desire for vengeance is a natural one, but isn’t it one we’re supposed to struggle against in a civil society? The number of people here who seem to think it’s fine as long as they’re the one doing the avenging, but who are remarkably indignant when someone else (such as a terrorist) avenges himself for a perceived slight on them, strikes me as quite remarkable.
Vengeance isn’t noble. Petty vengeance, like getting a funny photo, might be fun and may give you satisfaction. Tying up a scammer’s time and resources may in fact help protect other victims, as may find out more information about the scammer to help ID him for law enforcement. But sending him into a war zone? Why not just fly over to meet him and shoot him while you’re there? Or better yet, bomb the country? That would be great vengeance! After all, they’re mostly from Nigeria. The country must deserve it.
I agree - I don’t think the money laundering ones are that way so as to make the scammer feel like he’s on morally level ground with his victim. It’s just an attempt to spin a plausible yarn to explain why there might actually be millions of dollars floating around, plus it’s designed to make the mark more inclined to keep it secret (if he tells his mates, one of them might recognise it as a scam).
It’s not about vengeance, it’s about desert. That’s not a banana split or the Sahara, it’s “what is deserved”. These scammers are exploiting greed through lies and destroying the lives of others. Sounds exactly like what they received in return.
Whoa, now. No one “sent” this guy anywhere. No one made him get on a bus, buy a plane ticket, whatever he did to get to war-torn Stanstanistan and get shot at. He made this trip, I remind you, with the hope and expectation that at the end he would be able to defraud someone out of their life’s savings. He let his greed get the better of him, trusted a lie, and in the end got burned. And that, I again remind you, is exactly what he hoped would happen to his victims.
We’re not trying to decide whether bombing the country that a bunch of scammers are from is right. We’re trying to decide whether ruining a particular scammer’s life is right. Don’t try to get everyone sidetracked here.
To paraphrase Gandalf when talking about Gollum (because my copy of FotR is packed up), perhaps he does deserve death, but should you be the one who delivers him to it? Even in small part?
Vengeance isn’t sweet. Vengeance stinks. It’s poison to a society. It’s what drives the Pasestinian/Israeli mess. It’s what drives the Iraqi mess. It’s what drives terrorists.
You’re on a slippery slope there.
ETA: You guys mostly support Obama. Well, one of the reasons is because he isn’t vengeance driven. Try to live it as well as vote it. I know it’s not easy. We all want vengeance. But we can try.