Spanish Prisoners and other Scams
Posted by bmackay on November 25, 2008
While some TRU staff have fallen victim to targeted spear-phishing incidents here, I am hopeful that everyone is aware of the Spanish Prisoner confidence trick or the modern variant, the 419 Nigerian Money Transfer Scam. You know the drill: you receive an spam email with copious spelling mistakes informing you how a deposed rich person has picked you and needs your help (the Mark) to move money out of a country in return for a ridiculously large sum of money as your “payment.”
The scammer’s goal is to appeal to that universal human frailty: greed. Of course the Mark doesn’t get any actual money while the scammers siphon off the Mark’s life savings to fund an ever growing list of fabrications including local bribes and other red tape that stands in the way of the Mark hitting the jackpot.
Terrifying stuff and Canadians fall victim to this every year.
But revenge on scammers is a dish that is just as tasty served cold. An absolutely fascinating, frightening and highly entertaining look at the world of 419 Scammers can be found at 419eater.com as our hero (the scam-baiter) takes on the scammers at their own game. A delicious sample of the 419 eater work relates to getting the scammers to hand copy an entire Harry Potter book. But wise advice from another blogger – “don’t try this at home.”
Picture is from the movie “The Spanish Prisoner” , one of my faves.