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By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie Nigerian Scammer Wrap-upToday Mark Evanier featured my little Scamming the Scammer page on his News From Me site. Woo Hoo! This is the kind of publicity that makes superstars!! We're on our way to the big time now! Except for one piddling detail. I never told the Rest of the Story. What happened next? Did Dr. Mike ever respond? Let's find out... But first, my apologies. I've had a whole mess of things crash into my life like a drunken party guest, and I'm only now digging out of it. I can't tell you a lot of what went on, but it involved me suddenly not being employed by the company I've been at for about 15 years, off and on. You'll hear about it eventually. When we left off, I had sent Dr. Steve the "news account" of Homer's murder. Next morning... Thu, 24 Apr 2003 9:32 AM ATTN: MR JIM. Dear Friend, Your message has been received and the contents were well noted. I am astonished for the news now and I am totally confused. Please, let me know what happens with the problem because the matter must have affected our arrangement. I wait for your further instruction. Thanks, Dr Steve. Well. I guess business is business. So let's move on... Thu, 24 Apr 2003 10:51 AM Dr. Steve, Thank you for your concern. I 'm afraid that I may be called as a witness. It depends on how much aunt Earlene tells the police. If she says anything about the money, they could search her computer and find her e-mail, and then they'll know that I'm involved and may come to question me. They'll also find out about you, and may that could bring this money to the attention of the government. That means we have to move quickly. We're going to try the abused spouse defense, like in that Farrah Fawcett movie, The Burning Bed. He beat her up a lot and she was afraid for her life, so it was self-defense. I've probably said more than I should about this, so I'm going to delete these e-mails from my system in case my computer is taken as evidence. You haven't yet sent me your photo or any other documentation that you said you would send. I'm just waiting to receive it before I make the funds transfer. Can you get that done, please? The sooner I get the $14 million that's my share, the sooner I can hire a good attorney and help Earlene get out of this mess. Please send your documents quickly, and I'll make the wire transfer as soon as I get them. Jim It takes a couple of hours, but here comes Mikey... Thu, 24 Apr 2003 12:23 PM Dear Jim, This is my internaional passport. I will still send you email as soon as possible today because i m' so busy ok.
Here I run into trouble. I'm a Photoshop pro. I've created a lot of fake photos in my time. I know what looks real, and this ain't it. Frankly, I'm insulted. So I let Steve know about it... Thu, 24 Apr 2003 2:13 PM Michael, What are you trying to pull? Let me give you a little background on myself. Part of my job involves preparing pictures for printing and use on websites. I've spent the last 13 years editing and retouching pictures in Photoshop. I'm an expert at it. I can show you pictures I've done where I added 200 pounds to a woman, and others where I have completely removed people or changed their clothing. I'm VERY hard to fool with retouched pictures. Your passport is the worst fake I have ever seen. The type is floating above the background; it does not look like it is actually printed on the paper. The photo has been clipped out around the man's silhouette and placed into the passport and the word "Nigeria" has been pasted on top of it. None of this looks real. The Nigeria lettering is in a green that is far too bright to actually be printed on the paper, and it's knocking out the picture behind it. This is impossible. Who is that in the photo, and why are you sending me a phony passport? I've been straight with you, now you be straight with me. I'm having second thoughts about this deal. Jim Dr. Steve is starting to bore me. I mean I laughed out loud at his attempt at photo retouching, but I think I've gone about as far as I can with him. And yet he persists. Thu, 25 Apr 2003 12:44 AM ATTN: MR JIM. Dear Jim, Well! I'm delaying his destiny. I guess I better decide what to do today. I decide to go ahead and end the game, since the guy is not going to figure it out... Thu, 25 Apr 2003 7:24 AM Okay, now you're starting to bore me. Your passport is as phony as you are. I've known all along that you are a lying thief and are trying to steal money from me, but it was funny to jerk you around for a while and waste your time, but I'm done now. I've been putting all your e-mails up at my website so people could laugh at you. Earlene doesn't exist. I made her up. You are a fool, a mugu and now you have been shown to be such to the whole world. If you want to see how stupid you are, go to this website and take a look: http://www.monkeyspit.net/rantman/scammer.php You are too stupid to live. Please die now. Jim After I sent this message, I went to Toasted Spam, a site where one can sign up for junk e-mail. I enrolled Dr. Steve for a whole bunch of spam at each of the addresses I had for him. Then I forwarded our correspondence to the Secret Service's anti-scam office. After that I waited about a week and reported him to Yahoo and Juno. That's the last I heard of that guy. Mike did get a little tiresome toward the end with his relentless determination to get some money out of me somehow, which is why I finally ended the game with him. At the same time that I was messing with him, I received several similar solicitations from others. I'm collecting their responses into a separate feature for Monkey Spit. Tragically, none of them took the bait the way Mike did. I miss that guy. If you want to try your hand at scambaiting, you'll need the following resources:Toasted Spam, a spam subscription service PseudoMailer, an anonymous mailing service e-fax, a free fax service. Faxes are converted to graphics and sent to your e-mail address. Payphone Directory. Need a phone number? Pick one. It also helps to have some PhotoShop skills, but you can also find just about any picture you might need at Google's Image Search. The Feds. This is the e-mail address for the United States Secret Service, which investigates this kind of fraud. If you want to write it down for later, the e-mail address is 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov. Keep this address even if you don't want to screw around with the scammers; add it to your address book and forward all the scam letters to them as soon as they come in. When you do, be sure to change the subject line to "No Loss - For your database" so that they can process it properly. (If you actually lost money to one of these sharks, put that in the subject line so they can give you higher priority.) Have fun, and if you hook a live one, send it to us at scams@monkeyspit.net and we'll add it to our new Scam Baiting page. Good luck! Talk about your adventures in Scammer Baiting on our new Scam Baiters Forum!
Send this article to a friend! Discuss this on the Rant-Man's Notebook Message Board E-mail Rant-Man.
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